Corporate Political Strategy on Intellectual Property Rights: The Case of the Struggle against Patent Trolls in the United States

This paper seeks to understand through a case study based on secondary sources how companies simultaneously adapt their strategy to their environment and try to influence their environment by using a number of tools from business intelligence. The case studied here concerns “patent trolls,” that is, companies whose business model consists of buying patent portfolios and threatening to sue potential counterfeiters for royalties. The case study focuses on US patent trolls as well as major companies operating in the sector of information technology. It shows how patent trolls can exploit a favorable legal environment, resulting in a counter-reaction from major companies in the IT industry aiming to modify this legal environment and thus resulting in a political battle.