This summer has seen considerable discussion about one of the most controversial issues in patent law and policy—efforts of patent monetization entities (PMEs) also known to their detractors as "patent trolls"—to enforce patent rights.
PMEs—which have been defined as entities that acquire patents from others for the purpose of asserting them against alleged infringers—have been associated with a string of abuses. Typical of this view is a July 2013 report issued by the White House, Patent Assertion and U.S. Innovation, which asserts that PMEs "focus on aggressive litigation," "threatening to sue thousands of companies at once, without specific evidence of infringement against any of them; creating shell companies that make it difficult for defendants to know who is suing them; and asserting that their patents cover inventions not imagined at the time they were granted." Defenders of PMEs argue that those entities play an important role in allowing small inventors, academic institutions and others to benefit from patent rights that would otherwise never be enforced.
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