Andrei Iancu testifies during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee to be Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, on Nov. 29, 2017.

Patent trolls are not fictional monsters—they're real inhibitors to American innovation, according to a statement from the general counsel of the High Tech Inventors Alliance, whose members include Google, Amazon.com Inc. and Salesforce.com Inc.

HTIA's GC John Thorne issued his statement Tuesday in response to a recent speech from director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Andrei Iancu.

The director, who took office in February, compared patent trolls to the Big Bad Wolf from ”Little Red Riding Hood,” and said companies intent on discussing them are dissuading innovation by scaring potential creators away.

“After hearing about the Big Bad Wolf eating Little Red Riding Hood and her grandma, would kids be more eager to go into the woods and more eager to take risks? Come on!” Iancu said, according to his posted remarks at the Eastern District of Texas Bar Association Inaugural Texas Dinner earlier this month.

Thorne said he understood the draw of telling scary stories around Halloween, but that patent trolls are real-life monsters, and should be taken seriously. He said in his statement that nonpracticing entities with low-quality patents account for 90 percent of patent litigation around high-tech products and services.

“It's not a fairy tale. The phrase 'patent troll' is a phrase used by all the leadership in Congress, and both the Senate and House side. It's a shorthand. But it's a real problem,” Thorne told Corporate Counsel Tuesday.

Patent trolls can deter tech company investment into research and development, he said, adding that Congress helped alleviate this problem in 2012, when it created the inter partes review process through the America Invents Act. Since then U.S. companies have increased R&D investment by almost $200 billion per year,  he said.

Thorne added that the Eastern District of Texas, where Iancu spoke, has been a notorious patent troll hot spot. If American tech companies are to continue investing in innovation, Thorne said it's important to improve patent control, something he said Iancu had also expressed in their previous discussions together.

“One of his priorities properly is to improve patent quality, and I believe the director understands that there are two opportunities to do that. One is at the outset. You want to issue only good patents, patents that [you] should issue, and at back end, if a patent got out the door,” he said.

Throne added that Iancu's speech in Texas provides a chance to discuss the role patent trolls can play in disincentiving R&D investment from tech companies, including HTIA's members Adobe, Amazon, Cisco, Dell, Google, Intel, Oracle and Salesforce.

“It's important to take an opportunity like this to emphasize why patent quality matters and that's an important focus for the patent office, and I would expect that to be a very large focus for the patent office,” he said.