Who are the "Patent Trolls"?
Some large companies have become unhappy about the operations of companies that collect broad software patents to collect royalties from large companies. Intel coined the word "patent troll" for this. The Federal Trade Commission report speaks of "non-producing entities". One could also use the word "patent troll" for the corporate patent lawyers who have created the environment in which the behaviour which they now deplore is a rational choice.
News & Chronology
Outline
Some people at Intel and other large companies have recently been talking about "patent trolls". They are typically referring to companies that develop or acquire patents in order to look for infringers. The FTC report of 2003 refers to them as "non-producing entities" (NPE).
Comments
Hartmut Pilch: The term "patent trolls" should really be reserved for those corporate patent lawyers who now, after they succeded in lobbying governments for unlimited patentability, appear dismayed to find their company on the wrong end of the stick and start calling the winners bad names. Acacia, Eolas and others only implemented successfully what the losers from the corporate patent departments had preached. Or did we hear wrong? Who was it who told us just five minutes ago that in the information society patents are the currency of knowledge? that this allows people to receive a reward for their work independently of whether they produce or not? Who did we just hear arguing that the patent system is there to help the small guy? Was it the CEO of Acacia, who, by buying patents from small people helped small guys turn their ideas into money? No, it was, without doubt, one of the patent trolls from IBM, Siemens or the European Commission.
Benjamin Henrion: It seems that a frequently used tactic of non-producing entities is to go bankrupt when they lose in litigation and cannot pay compensation, like Mr Abramatic pointed in a debate:
Jean-François Abramatic, représentant un éditeur européen, a clairement indiqué que, aux Etats-Unis, Ilog était bien obligé de déposer des brevets pour défendre ses intérêts, puis de se soumettre aux multiples procès de mauvaise foi qui lui coûtent horriblement cher, même s'il gagne systématiquement contre des entreprises qui font aussitôt faillite pour ne pas avoir à payer de dédommagements. « Les brevets aux Etats-Unis, c'est comme une taxe qu'il faut payer » s'est-il ainsi exclamé. Avant de rappeler les mésaventures de Microsoft avec Eolas, et d'expliquer à quel point les brevets bloquaient l'innovation au profit de multinationales, essentiellement américaines.
Non-Producing Entities, often mislabelled "Patent Trolls"
TechSearch -- sued Greg Aharonian for using compression option in Apache webpage serving
Famous corporate patent trolls
Fritz Teufel, patent troll of IBM and Bitkom
Thierry Sueur, patent troll of Air Liquide, MEDEF and UNICE
Christian Nguyen, patent troll of Thales, MEDEF and UNICE
Harald Hagedorn, patent troll of SAP
Wilhelm von Lieres, patent troll of Siemens
Marshall Phelps, patent troll of Microsoft, formerly IBM