Good Trolls And Bad Trolls

The Nebraska attorney general recently put trolling for patents right up there with soliciting child pornography and selling designer drugs, and called for all three to be criminalized, laments Bruce Berman, an author and IP consultant. Berman draws a distinction between trolls who practice “blatantly frivolous patent enforcement that targets end-users, such as small businesses” and legitimate NPEs (non-practicing entities). “It would be easier to support criminal penalties for those who abuse the system in this way,” he says, “if executives of businesses that systematically infringe – and there are many of them – would also be subject to similar punishment.”