Patent trolls are everywhere

In the vast big buck world of HO model railroading, a patent troll has surfaced. The troll, Real Rail Effects, sent letters to makers of Digital Command Control (DCC) equipment demanding royalties based upon a US patent. The troll used to be in the DCC business but hasn't advertised any product for sale since 1997. Under threat, the other DCC makers rallied behind the banner of the National Model Railroad Association (NMRA) and challenged the troll's patent.
The NMRA pointed out that the system in question had been described in the open literature (Model Railroader magazine, a slick paper hobby magazine with wide national and international circulation) in 1992, two years before the patent was issued.
It's hard to understand the troll's thought process. The model railroad business is small, and the hobbyists are mostly retirement age. There isn't enough money in the business overall to make the trolling pay off. It's not like the Blackberry business which had to pay a troll off with $600 million last year.
It's also hard to understand how the Patent Office granted the patent in the first place. The prior art was plain to see, and the subject matter, an electronic encoding system, was obvious to anyone (like myself) skilled in the art. This patent was the equivalent of patenting the QWERTY keyboard layout.
The US patent system no longer advances the useful arts, it's placing obstacles in the path of advancement. Patents no longer protect inventors, instead the patent system allows parasites to steal money from those who have actually advanced the state of the art.
The model railroad business is tiny and unimportant, the real industries like Blackberry are under constant attack. We would advance the state of the art by abolishing the US patent system. While we are at it, we could repeal the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and restrict copyright to 17 years.