In addition to patent trolls and privateers, the sheer volume of patents is another overwhelming issue.

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These pirates--be they Internet telephony privateers or wireless buccaneers--are skilled with a cutlass.

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Early visitors are said to have included Christopher Columbus, Sir Francis Drake, various German planters and privateers, and Blackbeard.

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But the system grew rife with abuse, since most privateers couldn't be trusted to limit their pillaging only to enemy ships.

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When European exploration began, Britain's more constrained crown left trade in the hands of privateers, whereas Spain favoured state control of ocean commerce.

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Michael's brother John will ride in the BSB Privateers Cup, after his Ducati was barred from taking part in the British Superstock championship.

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In the 17th century the cays' hidden inlets, coves and limestone caverns were the favorite haunts of such pirates and privateers as Blackbeard, who plundered Spanish galleons leaving the New World.

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When his shipmates--fellow privateers and sociopaths in their own right--had had enough of him, they put him ashore in 1704 on a 12-mile stretch of volcanic rock off the coast of Chile.

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Kipling came to prominence after the adventurers and privateers who had built the British empire (he himself never heard a shot fired in anger) and before the naked power-politics of the mid-20th century (he hated Nazism).

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They pay privateers to capture the pirates.

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