Go to any technology conference these days, and you’re likely to find VCs who say that there are entire sectors they refuse to invest in, just because the waters are so troll-infested. Google and Apple might be able to do interesting things in wearable computing, for instance, but a single lawsuit could easily wipe out a startup in the same space — even if it was entirely frivolous. Even the 3D printing industry seems to have boiled down to a handful of companies, despite the fact that most of the patents in the space have expired, because it seems to be all to easy to get patents on tiny improvements to established technology. Technological innovation is increasingly a game that only the largest technology players can indulge in; every VC has a story of a portfolio company which gets sued for patent infringement and then gets a lowball acquisition offer from the plaintiff. Either sell out to us, is the message, or we’ll destroy you with legal fees.

Clearly, something must be done. But I’m not convinced that the White House’s wish list is really adequate to the task at hand. None of it would prevent the kind of trollery detailed in the This American Life episode; at best it might just force Intellectual Ventures, the biggest and worst of the trolls, to be marginally more transparent about what it was doing. Instead, the government should start going after patent trolls in much the same way as Preet Bharara is going after inside traders. Tim Wu explains that the ammunition already exists:

There are good laws in place that could fight trolls, but they sit largely unused. First are the consumer-protection laws, which bar “unfair or deceptive acts and practices.” Some patent trolls, to better coerce settlement, purposely misrepresent matters such as the strength of their patents, the extent of other settlements, and their actual willingness to litigate. Second, there are plenty of remedies available under the unfair-competition laws. Some trolls work by aggregating an enormous number of patents, and then present the threat that one of their thousands of patents might actually be valid. The creation of these portfolios for trolling may be “agreements in restraint of trade” under Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, or they may “substantially lessen competition” under the Clayton Antitrust Act. More generally, the methods of the trolls are hardly what you would call ordinary methods of competition; they should be considered, rather, what the Federal Trade Commission calls “unfair methods of competition” under Section 5 of the F.T.C. Act. The Commission has the power to define and punish methods of business that are inherently harmful with few or no redeeming benefits, and that’s what trolling is. Finally, it is possible that the criminal laws barring larceny and schemes to defraud may cover the conduct of some trolls.