Patent lawsuits are used as weapons in business wars between companies such as Oracle vs. Google and Apple vs. Samsung. Behind the intellectual property (IP) headlines, however, Lex Machina, a Silicon Valley startup, has found that patent troll lawsuits have increased from 24 percent of cases filed in 2007 to 56% in 2012. Lex Machina proves what we've feared all along: Patent trolls are winningAccording to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a "patent troll uses patents as legal weapons, instead of actually creating any new products or coming up with new ideas." They collect their patents for pennies on the dollar from companies down on their luck. Since the Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) has a bad habit of issuing very broad patents for ideas that are neither new nor revolutionary, it's easy for a patent troll, which typically has no other business, to send out threatening letters to anyone who might conceivably infringe their patents. These letters usually threaten a lawsuit unless the alleged infringer agrees to pay a licensing fee. These charges can range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Patent trolling is a very successful business. Mais
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