Lastly, the 'Patent Entities: List' API was called to retrieve a list of all biological targets for a given patent.
These aren't the kind that live under bridges or abuse people on internet message boards, but are companies also known as non-practicing entities (NPE) or patent assertion entities (PAE).
And that's another reason why it's perhaps a more attractive forum for a patent assertion entity," says Mr Marshall.
Entrepreneurs don't pour all their energy into building startups just to have a patent assertion entity (PAE, or "patent troll") attack them with patents of questionable quality.
CopyTele, a "patent enforcement entity" based in New York, has filed a patent infringement suit against Microsoft in connection with its Skype IP calling and messaging service, now used by 280 million people every month.
Unwired Planet, the patent enforcement entity that acquired 2,400 wireless patents from Ericsson last year, has filed parallel infringement actions in the Patents Court of the High Court of Justice, London, United Kingdom and in the Landgericht (District Court), Dusseldorf, Germany — covering a range of technologies spanning messaging, LTE and other mobile data-related technology.
Trolls (known in the legal world as "patent assertion entities" or "non-practising entities") do not make anything, but send out thousands of "demand letters" to companies that allegedly infringe what are often vague and overly broad business-process and software patents.
Trolls (known in the legal world as "patent assertion entities" or "non-practicing entities") exist solely to buy obscure patents, not to make anything, but to bully other firms that allegedly infringe them into paying a settlement fee, or face the punitive cost of litigation.
Typically, privateers are "patent assertion entities" (commonly called trolls) -- entities that make nothing, whose only product is litigation -- and, like pirates of the past, these attacks are deniable.
Patent assertion entities span a spectrum.
