We've talked a lot about patent trolls so I thought I'd publish a best-practices guide for successful trolling. So, for anyone aspiring to be the next big troll, here are a few pointers.
Obviously I'm not being serious :)
1) Your primary business model is to acquire low-quality patents that can be exploited. You have no product. Assertions are your product. Therefore, assert hard and assert often.
2) It takes hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, to properly handle a patent lawsuit. Target entities that can't do this; you'll win the fight before it even begins.
3) Also, attack big corporations. Companies like Apple, Google, Samsung, etc are likely to see you as a nuisance and distraction, therefore paying you to leave them alone rather than wasting precious resources fighting you.
4) Acquire patents that look complicated and legitimate, but are actually pretty ambiguous. As Uzi Aloush mentioned, a potential co-founder of SynPat made his living by asserting vaguely engineer-like patents. If you're lucky enough to get such a patent approved by the USPTO, good for you.
5) There's nowhere better to assert bad-quality patents than the Eastern District of Texas. The less educated the jury, the better.
Case Study:
TQP Development won a patent lawsuit against Newegg in the Eastern District of Texas by attacking the defendants' credibility in front of a clueless jury. Whit Diffie, inventor of public key cryptography, and Ron Rivest, the man who made it practically applicable, were cheated out of $2.3 million because TQP Development played the right cards. A committed patent troll, with the right legal team and favorable geographic conditions, can pull off even the most unreasonable of assertions.
* Most of the information was sourced from:
http://www.wired.com/2013/06/everything-you-need-to-know-about-trolls-the-patent-kind/
http://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-patent-holding-companies-2012-11?op=1
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/11/jury-newegg-infringes-spangenberg-patent-must-pay-2-3-million/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=togkSqKAvkE
Oh wow! Hahah this is nice! I like how you took this approach to put up a blog post from the view of patent trolls! It’s really unique! Don’t numbers 2 and 3 almost kind of contradict each other? For example, number 2 says that we should target companies that do not have much capital, and number 3 says to attack large corporations (which undoubtedly do have large capital). I would say that they are two different tactics, but it is important to choose your niche wisely. And definitely definitely, do it at the Eastern District of Texas! :) I really enjoyed reading this post! Good outline!
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