The January 2007 issue of Communications of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) has an article entitled “The Patent Holder’s Dilemma: Buy, Sell, or Troll” by Patricia Abril and Robert Plant. This is the professional journal for Computer Science. Articles related to IP are not presented very often, but when so, usually by Pam Samuelson.
It casts the current patent process as ‘dispiriting for today’s for independent inventors.’
The word ‘Troll’ in the title is more of an attention grabber as there is more to the article than troll activity per-se. It does survey many options for monetization of patent portfolios and the motivation behind various stakeholders.