Changes

There's no doubt that patent trolls exist. eDekka, widely considered one of the top patent trolls, sued filed lawsuits against 101 companies for patent infringement in 2015, 55% of which are considered small businesses under SBA regulations. There are certainly many may be more companies that eDekka sent threatening demand letters to, companies that decided to settle instead of bringing the case to court. Compare eDekka to Intellectual Ventures, which had only filed 6 patent lawsuits in all of 2015. Intellectual Ventures is considered by the public to be a legitimate patent monetization firm [http://www.ipnav.com/blog/patent-assertion-entities-good-or-bad-for-innovation/]. It is clear that there is a distinct difference between patent assertion entities and patent trolls. As of December 2015, eDekka had sued over 200 companies for infringing upon the US Patent no. 6,266,674 "Random Access Information Retrieval Utilizing User-Defined Labels". 168 of these cases were later thrown out by US District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, who wrote that the "strikingly similar lawsuits" demonstrate "an aggressive strategy that avoids testing its case on the merits and instead aims for early settlements falling at or below the cost of defense" [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/in-a-first-east-texas-judge-hits-patent-troll-with-attorneys-fees/].