You might not think it would be possible, but through some sophisticated knife-wizardry, Oklahoma State University and their resident meat expert discovered a new cut of steak: The Vegas Strip. Supposedly, it’s secreted away inside the slab of meat that’s traditionally ground up for hamburger. Why only “supposedly” you ask? Well, OSU won’t say exactly what the Vegas Strip really is, because they want to patent it.

Patent trolls have something of a reputation for overreaching when it comes to the lawsuits they file. In just the past few months, for instance, trolls have claimed they have patents on microtransactions in gaming, buttons that type smiley faces, tweeting in public, and Wi-Fi in general. If none of that sounds outlandish enough for you, you might be interested in a new suit being filed against Apple by a company called FlatWorld Interactives. What are they staking claim to? Not much, just the touch technology behind every single Apple device that has ever had a touch pad.

Say what you will about patent trolls, an excess of patents does have one completely positive effect on the world; it creates an excess of weird patent art. Now that things like software and video games are one of the main driving forces behind innovation, many patent drawings try to illustrate things that are fairly abstract. This has the bonus of making them hilarious and bizarre out of context, something the Tumblr Context-Free Patent Art has been doing, and to great effect.

Recently the fad of “tweet seats“ — seats in theaters where patrons are allowed, even encouraged, to tweet — has been becoming more and more embraced, even making its way to Broadway. If that sounds like a stupid idea to you, you might be pleased to hear there is a roadblock to further adoption. You shouldn’t be happy to hear that it involves patent trolling, however. Patent trolling of the most frivolous variety.

Patents are aimed to protect innovators and make sure they get their due. When you invent something, a non-obvious something, you patent it and these wonderful laws will make sure that, for a limited time at least, you alone reap the benefits of your genius. After all, it was your idea. It’s all great in theory, but patent trolls have been turning it on its head for a while, and the ever increasing amount of things that can be patented isn’t helping. Someone patented menus and buttons that assist users in writing emoticons, for instance, and RIM and Samsung are being sued over it.

After holding its tongue for years, it seems, Yahoo! has unleashed a patent lawsuit against Facebook, arguing that Facebook’s momumental success would not have been possible without the use of techniques developed and patented by Yahoo! in it’s heyday. Like software patent suits that have laid claim to everything from the concept of the micro-transaction to the concept of torrenting, this suit is mainly concerned with broadly defined techniques and strategies, as opposed to specific technologies or anything so physical. Social networking juggernaut Facebook is no small target, and it this seems to be an all-or-nothing sort of play on Yahoo!’s part.

Micro-transactions aren’t particularly new or novel. Every since FarmVille exploded, the concept of buying in-game materials in order to speed things up, making things prettier, or make things easier has been pretty widely adopted. It may, in fact, be the future of gaming, what with free-to-play games proving to a rather persistent trend. Considering that everybody is using micro-transactions and everything seems to be working out just fine, it can be that someone has a patent on them, can it? It can.

We all know that patent trolling is a pretty annoying and increasingly serious problem because they waste money that could be used to fund innovation, but what does that really mean? This infographic from MBA Online explains the depth of the situation pretty well. In recent business acquisitions, companies have found themselves paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per patent that comes along with the purchased company. If that’s not enough, your average smartphone can require upwards of 200,000 patents. Really? Does your smartphone really do 200,000, unique, creative, patent-worthy things? Even considering internal processes? Probably not, although it would be pretty sweet if it did.

Full infographic after the jump.