That is the heart of patent trolling.

With a weak patent you do not want a single victim with deep enough pockets to fight it. You want a large number who will pay you something to go away and stop ruining their lives.

If you actually read the article simple questions like this will be answered.

Nobody's being sued. They want settlements, not litigation. The printer companies would refuse to pay the settlement offers, so the lawyers get nothing. The 10-employee companies can't afford litigation, so there's a chance they'll pay off the troll to avoid it.

So it's basically extortion?

"It'd be a shame if something happened to your little business..."

Yes it is. And unfortunately the laws allow it.

If I were running a business that got one of these "settlement" letters, I say, "sue me." Then I'd turn right around and sue the printer company for failing to indemnify me for using their products and basically, force them into the fight.

Well gather up all your money + several hundred thousand more and burn it. All cause you didn't read the EULA of your scanner, the patents in question, or have a clue about US law.

Suing for indemnification is what I would do after filing ethics complaints against Jay Mac Rust and Brian Farney.

exactly, class action suit from everyone that got a letter too. make it match the thousands that are being trolled.

I want to know the same thing. Doesn't the printer manufacturer license these patents so each user does not have to themselves? I just can't understand how this bs is allowed.

It's in the article.

I couldn't find that addressed in the article, could you be a little more specific about where?

About halfway on the 2nd page:

"Second: Farney said that his client is going after scanner users, not to avoid doing battle with big scanner makers like HP and Canon but because there’s no other use for the patents. Because of the way the patents are written, MPHJ actually can’t go after scanner manufacturers. Only the whole “system”—putting the scanner together with a network—infringes.

“The devices can be used in plenty of non-infringing ways," Farney explained. "Several of the major manufacturers have talked to us about these patents, and they agree with us. The product they sell is not infringing. It’s putting the whole system together. If you have an office scanner that scans with one button, is hooked up to a network, and can send e-mail—you infringe.""

The article goes into that. The idea is that it infringes only at the moment the device is hooked up to a network.

How is that really inventing anything? They're either following instructions to use a product, or doing something completely obvious.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the intent of patents, but I would've thought they protected the interests of the inventor against competition by other inventors rather than users of an invented product?

I don't know the specifics of this man's legal claims, but the article makes his stance pretty clear: the combination of scanning, emailing, LAN and one-button operation is the thing that is patented. The point is not that the user is inventing something, it's that somebody else has invented this combination, and the user must now (again, according to this man) pay a license fee to use this specific invention.

"or doing something completely obvious."

This is also discussed in the article. Many things that many people (especially engineers) would consider 'obvious' or 'simple' really aren't under patent law (again, this mans claims), and in some cases, things that are 'obvious' now weren't when the invention was done. Which, to some degree, is true.

"Maybe I'm misunderstanding the intent of patents, but I would've thought they protected the interests of the inventor against competition by other inventors rather than users of an invented product?"

No, the point is to protect inventors by giving them a way to control under what circumstances (i.e., in most cases, after how much money has been paid) their invention can be used. Patents aren't about preventing other from inventing the same thing again, it's about having a monopoly on using/commercializing the invention.

Inventing ... Is not the issue. There are several ways to infringe a patent, and one of them is "practicing" it. This is likely the legal theory for finding infringement here.