Stop Patent Trolls
America's competitive edge has been rooted in its capacity to innovate. Modern economies thrive when entrepreneurs can compete on a level playing field. Unfortunately, that premise is under attack from a cynical new scheme: Patent-Trolls-for-Hire.
A New Era of Patent Trolls
For decades, legitimate innovators and investors have been battling with patent trolls, also known as patent assertion entities (PAEs). These firms do not make anything or invent anything — they exist solely to purchase patent rights and pursue litigation for profit.
This practice costs U.S. firms an estimated $29 billion annually in direct legal expenses, and approximately $60 billion when accounting for lost firm value and diverted resources. Patent troll litigation surged 22% from 2023 to 2024 alone, making it a current threat to American business.
Now, a new form of patent trolling is emerging that poses an even more dangerous risk: Patent Trolls for Hire.
Patent trolls have been hired to launch lawsuits, not to win a legitimate case, but to drain rivals’ resources by forcing them to allocate countless hours and millions of dollars to legal defense — ultimately driving up costs and lessening access to innovating products for the American public.
Americans are strongly opposed to the practice of patent trolling as it has existed previously and see the potential danger in this new approach. A recent poll reported that 86% of voters believe that the legal system should protect competition rather than allowing courts to be weapons for monopolists to eliminate competitors.
This sponsored patent abuse deserves a strong response from across the political spectrum to protect the U.S. legal system and safeguard innovation and U.S. economic interests.
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Key Topics
Patent-Trolls-for-Hire Scheme
Companies hiring third-party patent trolls to attack rivals represents a new era in patent abuse. This scheme undermines judicial integrity and enables a dominant firm to eliminate other companies through legal harassment rather than fair competition.
The Innovation Tax
U.S. companies spend billions annually defending against patent trolls, representing a hidden tax on innovation that gets passed to consumers through higher prices. This economic drain diverts critical resources from productive innovation to legal defense.
Exploiting U.S. Courts
Foreign companies that abuse U.S. legal loopholes and clog taxpayer-funded institutions do so to harass companies and stifle innovation, resulting in foreign-run monopolies that don’t serve American interests.
Real Inventors Pay the Price
Weaponizing patent trolls damages the credibility and effectiveness of the entire patent system. Future reforms and rebuilding efforts become more costly the longer we wait to act.
U.S. Innovation Under Attack
Strategic technology sectors like AI risk facing disproportionate patent harassment. While American companies battle senseless lawsuits, international rivals focus on innovating frontier technologies, potentially ceding critical technological advantages.
A Bellwether U.S. Antitrust Case
Realtek is pursuing a bellwether antitrust case against MediaTek, Future Link, and IPValue to fight back against corporate-sponsored patent abuse. This test case represents more than a business dispute — it's exposing how a dominant firm secretly bankrolled patent trolls to suppress competition and stifle innovation, and it could reshape how U.S. courts handle patent trolls' abuse of the legal system.
If left unchecked, this dangerous Patent-Troll-for-Hire scheme could be quietly adopted by more firms in more industries, jeopardizing businesses that depend on patents to safeguard innovation and fair competition. Every dollar spent on a meritless lawsuit could mean higher costs for families, fewer options for consumers, and slower progress in the technologies that define modern life.