Patent Trolls

Why not just have all companies pledge not to settle frivolous patent suits? The way the trolls make their money is by realizing that its cheaper for these companies to settle than to duke it out in court. The lawyers don't even care if you aren't infringing because it really doesn't matter. The trolls survive because people aren't willing to fight it out against them and they can pick on the weaker and smaller companies. If everyone said at the outset, "I will fight to the death a frivolous

This doesn't work for patent trolls. Patent trolls, by definition, don't have a business outside of patent licensing and suing for patent violations. The Mutually Assured Destruction of an IBM fighting a Samsung over patents doesn't hold for 3 lawyers in three levels of LLCs and a handful of near expiring patents suing a Samsung.

There's a ton of asymmetry that makes this not work. One, patent trolls are "non-practicing entities". They don't build anything, or do anything other than sue people, so you can t sue them for infringement of patents. Two they shard their portfolio into very small chunks, often one patent per company. If you knock down one patent, you just take out that one patent. Three, they are usually run by lawyers, so their cost to attack is just their time, whereas you'll have to

Patent trolls are looking at your employer or your business. They will sue and take whatever money they can get, which will come out of your pocket.Abolish the patent system and let human innovation leap forward.

It's costly to kill patents, but the trolls can create more for nearly free. It'd be a losing battle.

Is there a path toward criminal lawsuits against patent trolls?

In my reading, trolls rarely have just one patent. They tend to buy silly, trivial patents in bulk from wherever they can. Since a single lost lawsuit could cause the troll to lose only those patents they assert in the suit, the damage to them is minimal. I think this makes trolling even more insidious -- even if you (as a startup) win, you lose.

One can certainly file preemptive law suits to seek declaratory judgement that any granted patents are invalid and/or unenforceable. This had been done by some companies who felt there was risk to their business from certain patent owners.A troll typically holds 100s of patents and always on look out for opportunity to cash them out. If they are preemtively slammed with 100s of lawsuits for each patent they hold, their legal resources would be overwhelmed without possibility of huge rewa

It doesn't work with Patent Trolls (AKA Non Practicing Entities). What is the team of scary lawyers going to do? Since the trolls don't actually have a business or product, you can't sue them for patents they infringe. And their whole business is litigating patents, so tying them up in court is not exactly a deterrent. The trolls themselves are often lawyers, or just a company that employs lawyers on retainer.

The patent troll problem can be solved industry-wide with the formation of a patent-troll legal defense fund. A bunch of companies put money into a fund. If any company (not just the contributors) is sued by a troll, they can apply to the fund to pay for legal assistance (applicable controls can include approval, fund limits, etc).If trolls see that companies are more likely to stand and fight, the cost of trolling goes up and the rewards become much less predictable. Hence, trolls will lo