One of the cardinal rules of contracts is that words are given their ordinary plain meaning. This rule is applied within the context of the transaction. If words have a usual or customary meaning within a particular industry, then that meaning is attributed to the word used. If you want to depart from that rule, you have to provide a definition in the contract.
Hard drive manufacturers got into trouble with this principle when they quietly redefined a megabyte to be equal to 1,000,000 bytes instead of 2^20 bytes like everyone was used to.
If I had AT&T as my service provider, I would be complaining to the Federal Trade Commission alleging this as a violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act. I would also be complaining to my state's Attorney General alleging a violation of my state's consumer protection laws.
Section 285 of the Patent Act of 1952 (35 U.S.C. 285) already permits judges to declare patent cases to be "exceptional" and award appropriate relief. From the defendant's perspective, a case can be declared exceptional if the plaintiff cannot show that at least one claim of the patent in suit covers the device or process accused of infringing the patent. This section is regularly used by defendants to obtain attorneys fees and costs.
Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and Section 1927 of Title 28 of the U.S. Code also provides bases for the same relief.
The problem with patent trolls is not the inability of defendants to get costs. It is that trolls often wage licensing campaigns by bringing highly questionable claims but set the costs of licenses below the cost to defend an action in court. Companies typically choose to go the economical route and take a license.
Because we all know that all the agencies of the US Government work together seamlessly to develop and implement policy:
FDA: Protect the children from radiation
TSA: Protecting the public from terrorists requires us to irradiate the public
FDA: Radiation is bad
TSA: Radiation is good
FDA: Too much radiation for kids is bad
TSA: Radiation is harmless
FDA: Think of the children!
TSA: The children might be terrorists
Anyone else surprised?
Those who can, do; those who can't, write. Those who can't write work for the Bell Labs Record.