Patent trolling is buying up patents from their actual inventors for the purpose of suing and extorting money from companies that actually make use of the tech, while not actually doing anything productive with them.
Two facts here: 1) they invented the tech, and 2) they used the invention to legitimately produce items for sale.
They kept provisional filings on hold for over 15 years, released their own product without filing for the actual patent, and only did so after a competitor announced their own product.
If you don’t want to call it “trolling”, what do you call “abusing the patent process to keep competitors unaware of pending patents that can be used against them retroactively”? What would be a shorter word for that?
Patent trolling is buying up patents from their actual inventors for the purpose of suing and extorting money from companies that actually make use of the tech, while not actually doing anything productive with them.
Two facts here: 1) they invented the tech, and 2) they used the invention to legitimately produce items for sale.
Trolling is not a fit for this.
They kept provisional filings on hold for over 15 years, released their own product without filing for the actual patent, and only did so after a competitor announced their own product.
If you don’t want to call it “trolling”, what do you call “abusing the patent process to keep competitors unaware of pending patents that can be used against them retroactively”? What would be a shorter word for that?