The bill actually does touch on the style of patent litigation used by big tech companies:
But a number of voices, most with vested interests, have been scrambling to protect the trolls even with the concerns of the big trolls taken into account with the reduction of the bill's impact on "covered business methods." This part of patent law is used more by large corporate patent holders and thus opposed by the likes of IBM, Microsoft, General Electric, and Adobe.
(detail)
The system is basically automated WPA2 Enterprise. I read that a few airports in the US (Chicago) are starting to have this through Boingo. Normally Boingo is pay, but it's free for use through this service, so I'm guessing the carriers are paying a fee to them. It makes sense to authenticate the devices to make sure it's "allowed" to be on it.
At the time the story was fresh, it seemed likely that even if she were deemed competent, the punishment wouldn't be all that severe, very much because she wasn't likely to harm anyone else, yes. (As long as she doesn't have another roommate, anyway.)
I believe the (healthy) rationale behind the prosecution of cases where another attempt is unlikely or impossible (say the target died) is that the perpetrator has been shown to be unbalanced enough to attempt to redress one problem with murder and could potentially try to solve other problems the same way.
That being said, there aren't too many criminal justice systems that completely extricate themselves from being vengeful instruments of state violence.
As a general rule, to prevent further attempts. That counts as preventing harm!
(Although note my other post, which expands the definition to include redressal as well.)
There was a story a few years ago of an elderly lady with dementia who strangled another nursing home resident. Despite being an actual murder, it wasn't clear whether or not she'd actually be sentenced to any punishments.
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite. -- Bertrand Russell, "Skeptical Essays", 1928