Maybe I'm really uninformed or haven't been paying attention, but I was really surprised to see that a patent troll is traded on the NYSE: https://www.nyse.com/quote/XASE:VHC/company
Is that normal?
Is that normal?
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.