And here I thought patent attorneys had no sense of humor

At least one at Halliburton does.

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.