patent troll

patent troll, pejorative term for a company, found most often in the American information technology industry, that uses a portfolio of patents not to produce products but solely to collect licensing fees or settlements on patent infringement from other companies. The term patent troll arose in the late 1990s in reference to the trolls in Norwegian folktales, who exact tolls from travelers passing over bridges.

Using a patent to collect money from other companies predates the invention of the computer. American inventor George Selden is frequently cited as an early example of a patent troll. From 1903 to 1911, Selden, who never built a car, used his patent on the automobile to collect royalties from other automobile companies. In information technology, a series of rulings in American courts in the 1990s made it easier to patent software and computing methods. Those rulings were followed by an increasing number of patents, some of which were criticized as overly broad and thus were easily abused by patent trolls. Also, the United States traditionally had a system in which the first person to invent a product was entitled to a patent; in most other countries, the first person to file for a patent is the one who receives it. Thus, in the American system, someone who invented a product but neither patented nor manufactured it could bring a suit against a later inventor who was more successful at making and patenting the same product. In 2011 the United States moved to a first-to-file system, a development that, it was hoped, might reduce the activities of patent trolls, though certainly not eliminate them.

NPEs reject the term patent troll and claim that they are actually protecting the system by ensuring that patent holders receive the monetary rewards they are due. On the other hand, critics claim that NPEs act as a drag on the information technology industry. Because most patent suits are settled out of court, with both parties signing agreements not to disclose the terms, it is not known how much such activities cost the American economy. However, based on the decrease in value of companies’ stock after they have been sued by NPEs, it has been calculated that investors lost approximately $500 billion to patent trolls from 1990 to 2010.

The rise of patent trolls led to a practice called “defensive patenting,” in which companies amass portfolios of patents to protect themselves against lawsuits. For example, in 2011 the search engine company Google announced plans to buy the cell phone company Motorola Mobility. As a key factor in the acquisition, Google specifically cited its wish to use Motorola’s thousands of patents to protect its own mobile operating system, Android, from possible legal action.