It's time patent trolls were put out of business
IN A recent episode of HBO's sitcom Silicon Valley, a lawyer tries to extort money from a struggling startup by threatening to sue it for patent infringement.
The troll, who understands nothing about the underlying technology, owns a patent so broad as to be unenforceable, but knows that the victims of his perfectly legal extortion scheme lack the financial resources to fight him in court.
A recent research paper by economists Ian Appel, Joan Farre-Mensa and Elena Simintzi shows that the show's humorous scenario isn't that far from real life.
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