Patent Trolls Demand You Pay Up..For Using A Scanner?

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/patent-trolls-want-1000-for-using-scanners/

"When Steven Vicinanza got a letter in the mail earlier this year informing him that he needed to pay $1,000 per employee for a license to some “distributed computer architecture” patents, he didn’t quite believe it at first. The letter seemed to be saying anyone using a modern office scanner to scan documents to e-mail would have to pay—which is to say, just about any business, period."

This crap has got to stop. Yet I'm not sure corporations and the government are all that interested in stopping it. The legitimate (and equally stupid) "patent wars" have just opened up the ability to pull stunts like these trolls are pulling.