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.