I. INTRODUCTION
Patent trolls are currently under intense scrutiny by lawmakers, regulators, academics, and industry players. The term "patent troll" generally refers to patent owners that do not make or sell products, and instead focus on licensing and litigation to monetize their acquired patents. These entities are also known as "patent assertion entities" (PAEs)2, and in this paper, we use the terms interchangeably. Infringement suits brought by trolls have exploded over the last few years—in 2012 patent trolls accounted for 62 percent of all patent infringement suits,3 and recent studies estimate that trolls imposed direct costs of $29 billion in 2011.4 And these costs appear to be deterring investment in new businesses and technologies—one study estimated that venture capital funding was $8.1 billion lower over a five-year period than it would have been without PAE enforcement.5
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An article by Michelle Miller and NYU economist Janusz Ordover, with much help from Kenneth Merber, published in the January 2015 edition of Competition Policy International Antitrust Chronicle.
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