We have heard of patent infringement cases filed by various companies against various companies but now foreign governments are considering this as a lucrative business and are turning into “Patent Trolls” against tech giants across the globe. Countries like South Korea, China, France and Japan are launching their own patent acquisition companies that have no activity nor products but with a sole purpose of protecting their local companies and in the process also aim to make some huge amounts of money. These companies aim at spotting and acquiring patents related to existing products that are being sold in the market, once they acquire the patents they launch an assault against the product manufacturer so as to get licensing fees or even sue them for huge sums.
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Another aspect of such agencies is to acquire patents related to famous products being sold by their local manufacturers so that no one will be able to sue them, this protects their local companies from other patent trolls and thus huge losses are avoided.
The French and the South Korean governments seems to be claiming that they already have companies incubated by the government that owns these patents but none of these companies are yet to file a patent infringement lawsuit. While such things can prove to be helpful in few cases it looks like they are more of a disaster waiting to happen. Any company already making use of their patents to manufacture product line up of their own can sue another company ripping that technology, but buying patents and equipping themselves with a sole motive to sue other companies is a whole new angle!
Apple seems to be the core attracter for such lawsuits with a total 165 lawsuits against them from non-practising companies across the globe with 44 cases in 2012 alone. DeFazio has co-sponsored the SHIELD act, which he hopes will discourage patent infringement lawsuits by non-practicing entities by requiring them to pay their opponents’ legal fees if they lose.