Legal Sustainability of the Patent Troll Business – New Competitors in Value Capture

Zusammenfassung

This chapter explores wether the patent troll business model, which focuses on capturing value created by others, is sustainable under envisioned legal changes so that it poses a new managerial challenge to value creating firms. Patent trolls capture value created by others solely by enforcing patents against infringers and thus represent a new competitor to value creating firms in capturing value created. They are often characterized as relying on low-quality patents, an assessment that, if correct, would imply that eradicating such patents would effectively terminate the troll business.

This part of the dissertation has partly already been available in Fischer and Henkel (2010c). This paper has been presented at the Technische Universität München / Ludwigs-Maximilian-Universität München (TIME Kolloquium), Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley (Seminar on innovation), ETH Zurich (Research seminar), Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Research seminar), at the 4th Annual Conference of the EPIP association in Bologna, at the DRUID conference 2010 in London, at the Academy of Management Conference 2010 in Montreal. This paper was finalist for the 2010 Stephan Schrader Best Conference Paper Award of the Academy of Management TIM division, and appeared in the Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings.