Halliburton Tries To Patent Form Of Patent Trolling: The application covers, quite explicitly, having a company (we'll say Company A) that does not invent something, find a company (Company B) that did invent something, but chose to use trade secret protection, rather than patents. Then, the Company A files a patent covering Company B's technology, and then use the issued patent to get money out of Company B.
Now, one could hope that Halliburton's intention in patenting such a process was to use it to stop other companies from doing this, but it does make you wonder.