It’s a bad time to be a patent troll. For more than a decade, trolling has been a relatively foolproof, risk-free business model that has lined the pockets of opportunistic plaintiffs and sullied the best-in-class reputation of the U.S. patent system. Now, thanks to recent reforms and major court developments, greater efficiency and accountability have been injected into that system.
To be clear, yes—we do use the charged term “patent trolls” in this article. However, this term is not used as rhetoric to paint all nonpracticing entities (NPEs)—such as universities and other entities that aspire to monetize their patent rights—with a broad negative brush. Nor do we use the term to suggest that patent licensing activity generally is illegitimate. Rather, the term is used to address not the underlying business model of patent licensing but certain abusive behavior.
