Stop Patent Troll Armageddon: Use Defensive Aggregators

• Author: Kent Richardson - Erik Oliver
• Position: Kent Richardson is a partner at Richardson Oliver Law Group. He counsels clients on a variety of patent and business matters, including patent buying, selling, licensing, valuation, prosecution, and operations. Kent can be reached at kent@richardsonoliver.com. Erik Oliver is a partner at Richardson Oliver Law Group LLP in California's Silicon ...
• Pages: 35-38

Published in Landslide® magazine, Volume 9, Number 4, a publication of the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law (ABA-IPL), ©2017 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This

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No company looks forward to receiving a patent

infringement threat or being sued; litigation is a

costly and distracting part of being a products or

services company, regardless of company size. Patent troll or

nonpracticing entity (NPE) litigation is a relatively new and

disproportionately expensive cost. We are often asked by our

clients to help them gure out how to respond to NPE threats

and litigations, both anticipated and actual. At least part of

that solution exists with defensive aggregators, companies

whose goal is to end or reduce NPE threats. Defensive aggre-

gators are a cost-effective strategy for dealing with NPEs and

one your management will want to learn about and discuss.

Below is a brief primer on the subject.

Defensive aggregators are special purpose compa-

nies focused on helping operating companies reduce NPE

Stop Patent Troll

Armageddon

Use Defensive Aggregators

By Kent Richardson and Erik Oliver

risk. Historically, the advantage NPEs have had is that they

attacked companies individually. Defensive aggregators turn

the tables on NPEs by aggregating resources. By dividing the

costs of the NPE problem across their members, defensive

aggregators allow companies to share the costs of a patent

acquisition, license right acquisition, or patent challenge for

NPE-held patents. We compare the available solutions to help

companies select the options that best work for them.

In the remainder of this article, we present a framework for

modeling and selecting the appropriate defensive aggregators for

your company (see g. 1). First, however, we explore the NPE

problem in greater detail. Then we discuss the different defen-

sive aggregator business models and roles. We then walk through

the aggregator selection framework, and conclude by showing

how the model would apply to several sample companies.

Figure 1: Defensive Aggregator Modeling and Selection Process

Quantify

Those Risks







Assign Value

to Aggregator

Solutions







Select

Aggregator

Mix Addressing

Problem Cost

Effectively



Identify NPE Risks





(now, in 3 years, in 5 years)



(sophistication, sources,

tech areas, seller types)