Patent trolls take a toll on Korean IT companies

Two former mobile phone giants, Nokia and Ericsson, have become among the world’s biggest “patent trolls,” using their past licenses in telecommunication and mobile phone source technologies to make a profit.

They profit by making contracts with phone manufacturers for their patents and suing phone giants like Samsung Electronics and Apple, saying they are infringing their technologies.

Local analysts say this trend severely affects Korea. More than half of Korean companies that have lawsuits filed against them from overseas-based patent management firms are small or midsized. The patent managers are called non-practicing entities (NPEs).