How Misleading Scholarship Contorted an Individual Inventors' Story of Virtuous Patent Enforcement into a 'Patent Troll' Fable

Abstract

In the widely publicized campaign to curb purported “patent troll” litigation abuses, there are many anecdotal stories on non-practicing entities’ (“NPE”) alleged abusive patent assertions. In view of the paucity of accurate accounts of the real stories behind these “patent troll” stories, this paper exposes the machinery used to manufacture one of these fictional “patent troll” fables—profoundly misleading scholarship. The real circumstances of two independent inventors’ virtuous patent licensing and enforcement efforts in the medical imaging industry are presented; including their ultimate partnering with an established NPE to license more than a dozen accused infringing companies. Unfortunately, this story was retold under the “patent troll” narrative in a misleading scholarly article purporting to document a cessation of new medical imaging product introductions and reduction of sales by the accused companies after they were sued. The article argues that the patent litigation caused significant reduction of incremental innovation. Through the detailed examination of the article and the facts of the case, it is shown here that the article’s biased analysis, omission of critical highly relevant data, use of inappropriate and biased controls, and speculative legal and business counterfactuals led to erroneous inferences, fully invalidating its conclusions.