NPEs + Patent Trolls (Part 2)

In this post, I'll be focusing on why patents trolls can be a problem and why they're actually called trolls in the first place.  

Patent Lawsuits Involving NPEs Over Time

(Graph from PatentFreedom, 2014)

From this graph, we can see that the number of patent lawsuits with NPEs have drastically increased in the last few years, revealing why this is such a highly debated topic of late. 

To more clearly define patent trolls, I'll provide the definition given by TJ Chiang, a professor at George Mason Law School. 
He says a troll patent is one that:
1. Is owned by someone that does not practice the invention.
2. Is infringed by, and asserted against, non-copiers exclusively or almost exclusively. By copying I mean any kind of derivation, not just slavish replication.
3. Has no licensees practicing the particular patented invention except for defendants in (number 2) who took licenses as settlement.
4. Is asserted against a large industry that is, based on (number 2), composed of non-copiers.

So he's basically saying that a patent troll is a NPE that exists for the sole purpose of receiving licencing settlements or patent enforcement lawsuit settlements.

This sort of bahavior can lead to inflated prices because of the way the production of these patented technologies is withheld and made more expensive for those who actually want to produce them. 

Besides this, patent trolls often use their patents to threaten those who produce their patented technology, even though they themselves are not competitors in the market. Also, one key method used to settle patent disputes is counter-assertion, but NPEs generally don't produce products themselves, so the companies/people being sued for producing the NPE's patented products practically have no way to fight back against this kind of patent trolling.