I hear about these patent trolls a lot but I never really got an understanding of what kind of people and companies these are.
First of all, I know they are scummy and yada yada.
But they must be very smart, setting up shell companies and having deep (?) knowledge of the various tech stuff they are pursuing, it's not within the average persons knowledge to do things like these.
How do they get the patents? Do they validly have patents, 100% generic or not, before something similar comes up. Or do they somehow "craft" it towards the victim.
Is there some known person who is a patent troll?
Is it knowlegable normal people workin in the scene while doing these things "behind" the scenes or is it some proper company/office that delegates stuff to their "shells"? It must require a huge amount of work to fight these mega corporations, even if they give up quickly.
I find them faschinating in the same way as any high level scam artist since it requires some finess.
Check out ex-Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold [0] of Intellectual Ventures [1] infamy. He's also famous for his epic modernist cuisine cooking bible [2]. I also highly recommend the This American Life two-part podcast on patent trolls [3] [4].
You can read Nathan's attempted justification of his patent troll activities here [5].
Nothing makes my blood boil more than Nathan Myhrvold's weird justifications for his behavior. It all sounds plausible, maybe even admirable, and then he turns around and funds 'inventors' that have patents for absolute malarkey. At this point, I hope he is ONLY remembered for being a troll and nothing else.
Once people make it to the top, they almost always try to change the rules so no one can follow in their footsteps. "Well, yes, that was okay for me, but you are going to have to make it on your own, kiddo."
Establishing a capital market for inventions sounds like a great idea, but it is predicated on the notion that the patent office is not asleep at the wheel. Person-in-garage-invents-life-changing-technology is a great trope, but where the rubber meets the road we have the Eolas patent and various "using a computer or network of computers" patents.
They get the patents in various ways. The common way is to buy it from a bankrupt company, though many companies who aren't bankrupt will sell off patents. A lot of them will buy company X, then create X LLC as a holding company for the patents to sort of trick people into thinking it is a real company.
Some trolls will make their own patents. Sometimes it is engineers who fancy themselves inventors or other times it is a patent attorney looking to make money. Though the latter is fairly rare.
There are several big "patent assertion companies" that do this on a large scale. They are very good at determining value of a patent, figuring out who to sue, etc. They have a team of lawyers on staff. These types of trolls usually go after big companies for big dollars. They'll definitely settle, but they aren't looking for 40k or something small.
Some are small time groups or even single people who just learned the system. A lot are former attorneys. These smaller ones are more likely to just seek a small payout. These ones are the most annoying because they often have zero case but are demanding such a low amount that its better to just pay, which of course incentivizes more patent exortion.
But there are a lot of smaller law firms that specialize in troll law suits who do most of the legal work. I'm not sure what the business model is like, if they work on contingency or not.
If the trolls are making their own patent, one way to "craft" your patents is continued applications. You claim a super broad claim early, and then continue to fight over it for years and years. If you win the broad claim, huge win. But even if you don't, you can sort of craft the claims to cover technology that has since gone mainstream. The continued applications get backdated to the original. This practice has been reigned in a bit by changes to law and regulation.
But I think the best way is to just pick up patents from a legit company that is selling them or is in bankruptcy. These companies will have patents that were cutting edge at the time. I also think it's the more morally defensible way to patent troll. You give R&D extra value and let companies take out loans backed by IP, because you are creating a market for IP. I'm sure more than a couple mature start ups have leveraged patent portfolios to borrow capital.
The trolls and their attorneys are typically more efficient than defense firms. Defense firms typically throw an army of lawyers at the case and it has diminishing returns. Also, the plaintiffs role just seems easier IMO.
First of all, I know they are scummy and yada yada.
But they must be very smart, setting up shell companies and having deep (?) knowledge of the various tech stuff they are pursuing, it's not within the average persons knowledge to do things like these.
How do they get the patents? Do they validly have patents, 100% generic or not, before something similar comes up. Or do they somehow "craft" it towards the victim.
Is there some known person who is a patent troll?
Is it knowlegable normal people workin in the scene while doing these things "behind" the scenes or is it some proper company/office that delegates stuff to their "shells"? It must require a huge amount of work to fight these mega corporations, even if they give up quickly.
I find them faschinating in the same way as any high level scam artist since it requires some finess.