One Target for Patent Trolls With 171 Cases in Five Yrs

is the one target for "patent trolls", with 171 cases total in the last five yrs, according toPatentFreedom(viaFortune). This puts the company ahd of Hewlett Packard, currently in second place with 137 cases, and , with 133. , , , and all made the top 10 with a combined 1,218 cases between them.



A patent troll, or "non-practicing entity" (NPE) is defined byresrch firm PatentFreedomas "any entity that rns or plans to rn the majority of its revenue from the licensing or enforcement of its patents".

Michael Brody, an lectual property specialist at Winston & Strawn, told an audience at Stanford University rlier this week that a patent, "is nothing more or less than a to sue someone" andclaimedthat in 2012, more than 4,200 separate companies or individuals were sued by NPEs, with the average licensing cost for cases settled out of court being around $29.75 million.

Since 2004 onwards, the of lawsuits involving NPEs has risen sharply andPatentFreedom has reporteda 1300 percent incrse in cases between 2004 and 2013. The site suggests that this may be due to a 100 percent incrse in the of patents granted by the United States Patent and Trademark (USPTO) during the same period.

Over the yrs, has faced litigation from a of patent-holding companies like Lodsys, whichtargetedapp developers over in-app purchases, and VirnetX, a company that wasawarded$368.2 million over VPN connectivity in Facebook in 2012.