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What is a patent troll really? In VirnetX's case, last time I checked most (all?) of their patents were created in house.

There are numerous publicly traded stocks of companies that are mainly patent holding entities: Acacia (ACTG), Finjan (FNJN), Inventergy (INVT), MARA, Wi-lan (WILN), Hopto (HPTO), etc...

But where does the whole troll definition end - many mid-large corporations have patents that they do not practice or not embodied in any product - so aren't they trolls too? even if they haven't explicitly threatened legal action with those patents - competitors view those patents as implicit threats. So why not label them as trolls too? At the end of the day, every patent holder can be considered a troll in some way - so the definition of a troll really comes down to: patent troll = patent holder.




straw man argument is made of straw.




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