This happened to me as well. I wanted to share how we dealt with it was it was different from most comments here and may be useful to you. We paid. My company was sued along with few multi-billion dollar companies. I only found out because one of their lawyers called me as they were planning to fight back and wanted to check whether I wanted to join forces.
I found a good patent attorney and explained the situation. After learning that we were a small company with less that $500K revenue that year, bootstrapped and only had couple hundred thousand dollars in the bank, he suggested that I talked to the patent trolls lawyers by myself without a lawyer first. His rational was that they were not really after us as we were small, and once they learned that, they would either drop it or ask for a small amount to settle.
I followed his advice and had a call with them and it went exactly as he predicted. Upon learning that our US revenue was only few hundred thousand dollars, they asked $30K to settle and sent me an agreement. He reviewed the agreement for us, and recommended that we settle. We did. It was a ridiculous patent yet all of the companies that were sued settled as well. The experience was traumatic and was one the main reasons I decided to raise money from investors later. I slept better knowing that we had the funds to fight lawsuits if need be. Patent lawyer was happy to take the case if we needed to, but warned us about how expensive it would be.
Given that you're a single person company, you're likely small fish for patent troll. The best option for you may be to let them know that and see what they do. Best of luck!
I found a good patent attorney and explained the situation. After learning that we were a small company with less that $500K revenue that year, bootstrapped and only had couple hundred thousand dollars in the bank, he suggested that I talked to the patent trolls lawyers by myself without a lawyer first. His rational was that they were not really after us as we were small, and once they learned that, they would either drop it or ask for a small amount to settle.
I followed his advice and had a call with them and it went exactly as he predicted. Upon learning that our US revenue was only few hundred thousand dollars, they asked $30K to settle and sent me an agreement. He reviewed the agreement for us, and recommended that we settle. We did. It was a ridiculous patent yet all of the companies that were sued settled as well. The experience was traumatic and was one the main reasons I decided to raise money from investors later. I slept better knowing that we had the funds to fight lawsuits if need be. Patent lawyer was happy to take the case if we needed to, but warned us about how expensive it would be.
Given that you're a single person company, you're likely small fish for patent troll. The best option for you may be to let them know that and see what they do. Best of luck!