A patent holding company (PHC) exists to hold patents on behalf of one or more other companies but does not necessarily manufacture products or supply services based upon the patents held.
Patent holding companies may exist for tax reasons. Patent holding companies may also operate
patent pools
A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...
in order to provide a single source for licensing a patented technology. However, patent holding companies that aggressively seek to enforce patent rights through litigation or threats of litigation are referred to as patent assertion entities (PAEs) or, more pejoratively,
patent trolls
In international law and business, patent trolling or patent hoarding is a categorical or pejorative term applied to a person or company that attempts to enforce patent rights against accused infringers far beyond the patent's actual value or ...
.
Patent trolling
On June 4, 2013, in the United States, the
National Economic Council and
Council of Economic Advisers
The Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) is a United States agency within the Executive Office of the President established in 1946, which advises the president of the United States on economic policy. The CEA provides much of the empirical resea ...
released a report entitled ''Patent Assertion and U.S. Innovation'' that found significant harm to the economy from patent assertion entities and made recommendations to address them.
President Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. Ob ...
also addressed the issue, criticizing companies that did not produce anything themselves and existed only to "leverage and hijack somebody else's idea and see if they can extort some money out of them".
Obama Orders Regulators to Root Out ‘Patent Trolls’
June 4 2013, by Edward Wyatt, New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
See also
* Patent portfolio A patent portfolio is a collection of patents owned by a single entity, such as an individual or corporation. The patents may be related or unrelated. Patent applications may also be regarded as included in a patent portfolio.
The monetary benefit ...
* Patent thicket
A patent thicket is "an overlapping set of patent rights" which requires innovators to reach licensing deals for multiple patents. This concept has negative connotations and has been described as "a dense web of overlapping intellectual property ri ...
References
{{reflist, 30em
Business terms
Patent monetization companies of the United States
Criticism of intellectual property