Patent Trolls: An Overview

This video comes from the first Harry Potter novel but accurately incorporates the idea behind these patent trolls. Indeed, they are hiding in the dungeon waiting to come out and snatch up the war chests of large companies that might have infringed on esoteric or small patents. There are many "patent trolls" but this term can be seen as highly negative because well, trolls are ugly. 

Continuing on, these trolls are also known as NPE which stands for Non-Practicing Entities. These NPEs have a mission to find patents for sale and buy them before a large company like Google can so that when it becomes infringed one way or another they can sue for millions. There are also companies like RPX which also go and buy these patents but instead of suing the firms they offer to licence out the patent to avoid major lawsuits.