Patent Assertion Entity Activity

Appendix A: Glossary of Frequently Used Terms 348
“Acquire” and “acquisition” mean to purchase or obtain from another person any legal right to a patent,
or to purchase or obtain a person who holds any legal right to a patent. This definition does not include
the assignment of legal rights to a patent by a firm employee who is bound to assign his or her legal
rights to the firm at the time of invention.
“Affiliate” means a firm identified by a Responding Firm in response to Specification B.2 that
asserted patents during the study period. 349 Specification B.2 required Responding Firms to identify
all parents, wholly or partially owned subsidiaries, incorporated unincorporated divisions,
affiliates, branches, joint ventures, franchises, operations under assumed names, websites, or other
person(s) over which the firm exercises or has exercised supervision or control since January 1,
2009. There are 327 Affiliates in the study.
“Assert” and “assertion” mean: (i) any demand; (ii) any civil action threatened or commenced (by the
firm or other person) relating to any patent; or (iii) any investigation pursuant to 19 U.S.C. § 1337
threatened or initiated (by the firms or other person) relating to any patent; and (iii) any license by the
patent holder to practice the claimed invention, including, but not limited to, a covenant not-to-sue and a
covenant not-to-assert. For Wireless Manufacturers, “assert” and “asserted” do not include sales of
products manufactured by the Wireless Manufacturer, or on its behalf, that practice the claimed
invention.
“Case” means the unit of observation defined as a matter between a particular plaintiff and a particular
defendant involving a particular set of asserted patents. The FTC refers to this unit of observation when
presenting its litigation analysis.
“Demand” means the first effort since January 1, 2009, to license any patent, in whole or in part, and
any other attempt to generate revenue by authorizing a person outside the firm to practice an invention
348
For reader ease, the FTC did not capitalize all defined terms in the report. These terms do not have another meaning,
unless otherwise noted.
349
Firms identified in response to Specification B.2 that held but did not assert patents are called “Holding Entities.”
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