In an upper hall at CES this afternoon, a Congressman and a panel of speakers gathered not to talk about a new gadget or a budding technology, but to focus on a nascent legal problem that's hindering technology. The topic of the hour was so-called "patent trolls," the shell companies that hope to get rich by suing the companies that make, or sometimes simply use, tech products.

This CES is the first to take up this issue, and it suggests how widespread the problem has become. Patent-holding companies are going after not just the usual targets—big tech companies—but digging down and going after small developers, as Lodsys has done recently. In some cases, they're even going after businesses way outside the tech sector that simply use everyday technology.

The panel was opened by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR), who co-sponsored an anti-patent-troll bill last year called the SHIELD Act, and has plans to introduce a modified version of it in the new Congress.

The key to passing such a bill is to build a wide coalition, said DeFazio. (A catchy name helps too; SHIELD stands for Saving High-tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes.) DeFazio made an analogy to a fight he'd overseen about an amendment creating a national standard for organic food in a farm bill back in the 1990s. Key lawmakers from agricultural states were against the move. Ultimately, after talking not just to organic farmers, but to shippers, distributors, and retailers, the coalition of people knocking on lawmakers' doors just got too big.

"I had one member say, DeFazio, I dont know what this goddamn organic stuff is—but if these people stop bothering me I'll vote for your amendment," he said.

It's not a perfect analogy, but it is instructive. Most members of Congress tend to view patent issues as a far-off world to be dealt with by the lawyers, not something concerning a small business in their district.

But building a broad coalition should be possible, DeFazio said, especially as widespread patent litigation spreads to other parts of the economy.

"We've been approached by airlines being sued for their seat-selection software," said DeFazio. "Urban areas, including Portland in my state, are being sued for tracking vehicles in their transit system. Now there's the [Project] Paperless patents, beginning to go around the country charging $1,000 per employee for scanning PDF's to email. We're looking at a bigger coalition that hopefully cannot be put aside even by a dysfunctional congress."

DeFazio's new bill will focus more on a challenge that has stumped lawyers and observers of this space for years—the question of what a "patent troll" truly is. The details haven't all been worked out, but broadly speaking, a defendant could make an early motion that a litigant should be classified as a troll or "non-practicing entity." If the plaintiff fits that definition, it can still move ahead with the lawsuit—but, if it loses, it will have to pay the defendant's legal costs. In addition, such a patent-holder would have to post a bond, so they couldn't pack their bags and run away to form another shell company.

After DeFazio laid out the basics of his bill, a panel of speakers from businesses small and large gave their particular perspectives about the patent troll problem. Jay McLellan described how his 55-employee company, Home Automation Inc., was sued by a troll that had acquired a 17-year-old patent six months away from expiration. But the lawsuit had come up during the due diligence period of an acquisition negotiation. "So what did we have to do? We had to settle."

Patrick LaVelle comes from a mid-sized company, with annual sales around $900 million. His company has spent $25 million in legal and settlement costs in recent years fighting off patent trolls—but that doesn't count the engineering time lost to litigation. "These expenses end up in the cost of your product," he said. "The consumer ends up paying for this."

Suzanne Michel, senior patent counsel at Google, mentioned some of the familiar numbers about patent trolls. Trolls now constitute 61 percent of all patent litigation, she noted, with $29 billion in direct legal costs every year.

Lee Cheng, Chief Legal Officer of online retailer Newegg, had tougher words.

"A troll is a type of entity that doesn't sell a product, or transfer value of any sort," said Cheng. "All they offer is the right to not be sued. It's protection money. To put it bluntly, it's extortion."

When Newegg first got attacked by trolls, the company settled a suit, said Cheng. But then more came."Then we realized there are four different companies asserting search-related patents against Newegg," he said. "We're not going to pay them all off."

The discussion at the end of the panel turned to possible solutions.

"Congressman, I don't suppose criminalizing patent trolling would be too extreme?" joked Cheng.

"I tried to do that with Wall Street and I couldn't," smiled DeFazio.

More realistically, Cheng said that damages reform would be a big step forward. He added that companies should take a page out of Newegg's playbook and fight more cases.

Michel noted that while a "loser pays" system for some patent suits, like DeFazio is proposing, could be a "valuable thing," it won't knock out all nuisance suits. It should be made cheaper to challenge the validity of the patent at the patent office, she said.

Julie Samuels of EFF said that they're also making progress on so-called "self-help remedies."

"We've got for-profit and not-for-profit companies working in the world of 'defensive patenting,' if you will," said Samuels.

Another alternative is to spread ideas like Twitter's "Innovator Patent Agreement," in which the technologists at companies can keep control of patents that come out of their ideas, and prevent them from falling into the "wrong hands." By and large, "software engineers hate software patents," said Samuels.