Patent Trolls facts

While investigating facts about Patent Trolls Texas and Patent Trolls 2018, I found out little known, but curios details like:

In 2011, United States business incurred $29 billion dollars in direct costs because of patent trolls.

how patent trolls work?

One of America's first patent trolls was George Selden, who was granted a U.S. patent for an automobile in 1895, and proceeded to sue anyone else who attempted to produce one even while he never manufactured a car himself.

What do patent trolls do?

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what companies use patent trolls. Here are 18 of the best facts about Patent Trolls 2019 and Patent Trolls Definition I managed to collect.

what are patent trolls?

1. Patent trolls cost businesses $29 billion a year in direct losses and accounts for almost 2/3 of patent lawsuits. Companies that have to pay patent trolls reduce R&D spending, by an average of $211 million and invest in legal representation at the expense of technology development.

2. Patent Trolls or Patent Hoarding. Evidently, they acquire and hold useful patents with no intention of developing the technology, and then sue anyone who tries to use a similar idea.

3. One county in Texas is responsible for 44% of patent cases (many of which are shell companies referred to as patent trolls), and one Judge Rodney Gilstrap presided over 80% of these cases

4. When the FTC ordered a patent troll to stop scamming thousands of small businesses into sending him $1000 for every violation of a patent that he claims prevents anyone from using a scanner to scan a document to email, he sued the FTC for violating his right to be a patent troll.

5. A small town in east Texas with only 24,000 people saw 25% of all patent law suits in America. Patent trolls used to try all their cases there before the supreme court disallowed it.

6. There used to be an entire town in Texas which economy was built around patent violation lawsuits, aka patent trolling

7. One quarter of all US patent cases, including most 'patent troll' cases, go before one judge in a small town in Texas

8. A Patent Troll collected more than $100 million in license fees from 30 companies and sued 31 other companies for using the JPEG image format.

9. Apple's FaceTime was promised to be an open standard, but they abandoned that because of legal issues with patent troll VirnetX

10. In 2008, Halliburton applied for a patent on the practice of patent trolling.

Why are patent trolls legal?

You can easily fact check why do patent trolls by examining the linked well-known sources.

A patent troll sued Faber-Castel for selling pencil with attached eraser. in 1875 US supereme court ruled against him.

In 2011, patent trolls cost business entities over 29 billion dollars in the US - source

Bill Gates supports patent trolling and is heavily tied into the world's worst patent trolling company, Intellectual Ventures. - source

Samsung lost so many patent troll cases in Marshall, Texas that they built an outdoor ice rink outside the courthouse to win the favor of potential jury members.

The reason Apple never made facetime an open standard as Jobs said they would is due to losing a patent case to patent trolls - source

When was the us patent and trademark office founded?

Halliburton patented a Trolling Application