>Someone really ought to start patenting every awesome piece of technology that we love from sci-fi

That's actually Nathan Myhrvold's, ex-CTO of Microsoft, business plan for Intellectual Ventures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Myhrvold#Intellectual_v...

He basically gathered around a bunch of visionaries, 'industry leaders' and sci-fi people and then they started patenting ideas that they thought would end up as products a decade+ later. Some accused him and IV of being patent trolls... because they patented all kinds of general stuff.