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Don't get me wrong, I love This American Life, but a week before the more recent episode aired the State of Vermont passed a law to clamp down on patent trolls and its attorney general started suing patent trolls. See: http://abovethelaw.com/2013/05/vermont-declares-war-on-paten...

Obama made statements in February regarding the harm imposed by patent trolls: "On a Google Hangout in February, Obama said patent trolls abuse a system that was designed to protect inventions and foster innovation. "They don't actually produce anything themselves," Obama said. "They're just trying to essentially leverage and hijack somebody else's idea and see if they can extort some money out of them." (http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/04/technology/innovation/obama-...)

Also, the This American Life episode just aired last weekend. I highly doubt the executive orders were written in one business day.




Last weekend's episode was a followup to one from two years ago, so there is possibility that their work has affected public discourse.




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