Halliburton applies for the method of troll patenting

It was UC Berkley, among others. Then, Microsoft. President Obama better sign a decree that makes it a criminal offense for anyone in the patent world to use the word troll. It is a meaningless term that becomes more and more pointless each day, due in part to the following absurd wackiness applied (and breezed through by the US Patent law) for by Halliburton Energy Services:

Patent acquisition and assertion by a (non-inventor) first party against a second party U.S. Patent Application 20080270152 Claim 1: A method for a non-inventor first party to acquire and assert a patent property against a second party, the method including the first party performing the following acts: obtaining an equity interest in the patent property; writing a claim within the scope of the patent property, the claim being written to cover a product of the second party, where the product includes a secret aspect, the secret aspect including an unobservable aspect, where writing the claim includes performing research using a computer to convert the unobservable aspect to an observable aspect; filing the claim with a patent office; offering a license of the patent property to the second party after the patent property issues as a patent with the claim; and attempting to obtain a monetary settlement from the second party based on the assertion of infringement of the claim. Patent property - both novel and vague term. Aspect is already used in the claim within a different aspect. I guess Dick Cheney needs novel and non-obvious ways to make business off government contracts.