In 2022, three companies with strange names and no clear business purpose beyond  patent litigation filed dozens of lawsuits in Delaware federal court, accusing businesses of all sizes of patent infringement. Some of these complaints claimed patent rights over basic aspects of modern life; one, for example, involved a  patent that pertains to the process of clocking in to work through an app. These companies–named Mellaconic IP, Backertop Licensing, and Nimitz Technologies–seemed to be typical e...