Patent Assertion Entity Activity

In one of the earliest studies, James Bessen and Michael Meurer (2008) responded to anecdotes about
the impact of “patent trolls,” which they describe as either patent holders “who opportunistically assert
weak patents against the firms that actually develop the technology covered in the patent” or “small,
nonproducing inventors who do not develop or commercialize new technology, who do not manufacture
anything, but who do hope to snare other firms in their patent traps.” 66 Criticizing the indefiniteness of
these labels, they chose a “narrow and crude” proxy for lawsuits by “trolls”—lawsuits filed by
individual inventors. 67 They concluded that the percentage of infringement lawsuits involving patents
awarded to individuals between 1984 and 1989 (24%) did not change materially as compared to the
percentage during the period between 1990 to 1999 (22%). 68
John R. Allison et al. (2009) compared the characteristics of the 106 most litigated patents from 2000 to
2007 with a randomly selected control set of 106 patents that had been litigated only once during the
same period. 69 The most litigated patents accounted for 2,987 infringement suits, or only about 14% of
all suits during the study period. 70 NPEs were responsible for over 80% of suits related to these mostlitigated
patents, however, with the bulk of the suits (2,198) initiated by “individual-inventor-started
compan[ies].” 71 Allison et al. note, however, that “companies enforcing patents that cover inventions
they did not themselves develop” accounted for just 7% of the lawsuits during the study period. 72
Sara Jeruss et al. (2012) studied lawsuits filed by “patent monetization entities” or PMEs. 73 Their study
examined a randomly selected set of 100 patent cases filed each year from 2007 to 2011, which were
66
JAMES E. BESSEN & MICHAEL J. MEURER, PATENT FAILURE 159 (2008).
67
Id.
68
Id. at 160.
69
Allison et al., supra note 46, at 5.
70
Id. at 25–26.
71
Id. The other non-practicing entity class represented in the sample is the licensing company that acquires patents (entity
class 1). Allison et al. noted that their study sample was skewed by cases filed by Ronald Katz, who owned a large
percentage of the most litigated patents and was involved in 60% of the suits (1,789). Id. at 26. “Katz is a product of the
current patent system, and the Katzes of the world should be considered in evaluating the effects of that system.” Id.
72
Id. at 32.
73
Jeruss et al., supra note 2, at 361.
21