B. A party that enforces patents against purported infringers without itself intending to manufacture the patented product or supply the patented service.
Listen
to pronunciationLegal Definition -
Patent troll is a controversial neologism (new word or phrase), susceptible to multiple definitions. Among them is a party that: purchases a patent, often from a bankrupt firm, and then sues another company by claiming that one of its products infringes on the purchased patent; enforces patents against purported infringers without itself intending to manufacture the patented product or supply the patented service; focuses its efforts solely on enforcing patent rights.
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Editor's Note -
This is a very hot topic in the US because there is no requirement to either "use or lose" a patent. If you want to know more you can google "patent troll". You will find many different articles, including this interesting blog: www.TrollTracker.blogspot.com
Current Usage -
"Humorous patents, clearly show both how broken the American patent system and how lax standards are hurting innovation when it comes to business, the Federal Trade Commission says. 'The intellectual property system was designed to create incentives for people to innovate by giving them, for want of a better word, a monopoly on their ideas for a certain period of time,' FTC commissioner Mozelle Thompson told BBC News Online. 'But we have seen instances where companies use that monopoly in an anti-competitive way, sometimes to prevent other products from getting to market, to prevent people from sharing ideas and to prevent the kind of innovation that the patent system is really trying to spur on.' An added problem is the growth of so called 'patent trolls' who can be likened to modern day highway robbers cashing in on the problem. These are lawyers and investors who buy cheaply or assume control over paper patents, mistakenly granted largely to failed companies, explains David Simon, computer firm Intel's chief patent counsel. The trolls can use these patents to threaten to shut down the entire computing industry with a court order injunction, no matter how minor the feature that has been patented is."
Maggie Shields, BBC News June 2, 2004.