What Is Patent Troll?

Patent trolls are like a bunch of kids who buy a bunch of fireworks and use them to blow up your house. You know that kid who's always buying fireworks, not because they're interested in the science behind them or want to learn how to make them; they want to light them off and watch the show? That's a patent troll. They don't care about the technology behind their patents; they want to enforce it. They're not trying to develop new products or services based on that technology. They want to sue people who do. In tech companies, patent trolls have become a common problem. You might be wondering what a patent troll is. A company exists solely to buy patents and sue others for infringing them. It's like you're being sued by a guy who doesn't even have any products or services, but he has some patents and will sue you for using them! Some people think patent trolling is an annoyance or a nuisance, but it can be severe. Large companies with deep pockets often back the trolls, so they can afford to spend years fighting cases in court. If you get hit with one of these suits and lose, it could cost you millions of dollars in legal fees and damages! Patent lawsuits are not new. They've been around as long as there have been patents. These cases have increased in the past few years, especially in tech. There are a few reasons for this trend. Still, a direct patent infringement can happen in a software environment much more quickly than with other intellectual property. That's because software is patented rather than copyrighted (which means someone else's work doesn't infringe on your own if they create something similar). Unlike pharmaceutical patents, which are pretty straightforward from a legal perspective, the language used in software patents can be abstract and hard to understand. When aggressive patent litigation emerged in the 1990s, many companies - most notably Microsoft - paid hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements and awards for violating patents held by other companies.

By TechDogs Editorial Team

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Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB)

Let's discuss what the ESRB is in reality. This self-regulatory group gives video games and other interactive media ratings depending on their content. They decide whether a game is appropriate for children, teenagers, or adults. You may now be curious how the ESRB determines what rating to assign a game. The content is everything in the end. Violence, language, sexual material, drug usage, and other issues are all examined. Based on that, they give the game a rating that indicates what age range it is suitable for. The ESRB employs six separate rating systems. Early Childhood, which is for games appropriate for children ages 3 and up, is the first category. The next category is "Everyone," for games suitable for players of all ages. Games appropriate for children ages 10 and up are marked as "Everyone 10+." Games appropriate for teens aged 13 and older are designated as "Teen." Games appropriate for adults aged 17 and over are classified as "Mature." The "Adults Only" category is for games only appropriate for adults at least 18 years old. Yet, there's still more! Also, the ESRB uses content descriptors to provide you with additional details about a game's contents. These tiny symbols, which appear next to the rating, let you know whether or not there is violence, sexual content, or foul language. Also, they can let you know if a game has online multiplayer options. You might be asking at this point why the ESRB is so significant. One benefit is that it enables parents to make well-informed choices regarding the games they allow their children to play. A parent may conclude that a game is inappropriate for their child if they notice that it has an "M" rating and content descriptors for violence and sexual content. The ESRB is not only for parents, however. Also, publishers and retailers need it. Retailers use the ESRB ratings to ensure they do not offer children inappropriate games. Publishers use the ratings to promote their games to the appropriate demographic. That concludes our brief overview of the ESRB. You now know that a company rates video games according to their content and provides additional information using content descriptors. Also, you know the significance of the ratings for publishers, retailers, and parents. Even specific technical phrases like "content descriptors" and "self-regulatory structure" were taught to you. Not terrible for a few paragraphs.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

The search engine results page (SERP) is like a buffet of potential websites that appear in response to a search question. It's the equivalent of ordering dinner at a diner. Only the options on the menu are links to various websites. However, the results on the SERP are ranked similarly to a menu, with the most relevant results displayed first. How does the search engine rank the results and select which ones to display you? For this, you'll need to know some technical details. Websites are rated according to their relevance to a search query based on several variables, such as keywords, inbound links, and user activity. However, being pertinent is not the only concern. Similarly, search engines also factor in how trustworthy and high-quality a website is. They ensure the sites they recommend are trustworthy by checking for load time, smartphone friendliness, and security. Let's break down what makes up a search engine results page (SERP). In some cases, advertisements marked "sponsored" or "ad" will appear at the top of the screen. These results are sponsored by a company that has paid to be displayed as the first on the search engine results page for a particular search term. Search engines use an algorithm to determine which websites are most pertinent to your query, and those results appear below the paid advertisements. According to the search engine's ranking algorithm, which considers factors such as relevance, authority, and user interaction, the results for organic searches are ranked in order. Not to mention the search engine results page elements! Special search results page features (SERP features) include featured snippets, information panels, and local pack results. These functions are made to save people time by allowing them to find the information they need without visiting a website. A SERP (Search Engine Results Page) is the screen of links that appears after you enter a query into a search engine. The search engine algorithm considers factors like relevance, authority, and user interaction to determine the order in which results are displayed. In addition, the search engine results page (SERP) characteristics are the additional components depicted there. Remember that the search engine results page (SERP) is like a carefully curated virtual buffet of websites, serving up only the most relevant results the next time you query.

Pay Per Lead (PPL)

It's no secret that you're hungry for leads. It would help if you had them to grow your business and make money—but finding them in a sea of noise is hard enough, let alone turning those leads into customers. An advertiser or marketer pays an affiliate based on the number of leads converted to the advertiser in a pay-per-lead (PPL) affiliate marketing program. If you're not familiar with affiliate marketing, it's pretty simple: Affiliates are people who promote products or services on behalf of brands they believe in. When someone clicks through their link and makes a purchase, the affiliate receives a portion of that sale as commission. With PPL, however, the affiliate doesn't just get paid when someone purchases from their website; they also get paid established on how many people click through their links to sign up for something like an email newsletter or software trial offer—and then convert into customers by making actual purchases later on down the line. The more people an affiliate gets to sign up for something like this, the more money they can potentially make from each lead! PPL is a sneaky way of gaming the system, and we're not just saying that because it's an affiliate strategy. It's true: PPL can be abused and that's because its design is inherently dishonest. When you look at PPL, it seems like it was designed to incentivize affiliates to be honest, and forthright in their reporting of leads they find and bring to the advertiser. This is one of the reasons why advertisers love it so much—they feel like it gives them more control over who they work with and what kind of leads they get. But this isn't always the case. If you look closely at how most PPL programs are set up, you'll see that affiliates have incentives to report false or misleading information about their leads—in other words, cheat! This happens when the affiliate is looking for more money from the advertiser by showing them weak or fabricated leads (i.e., fake people). It also occurs when an affiliate wants more money from another affiliate (i.e., your competition).