Enforces patents against purported infringers without itself intending to manufacture the patented product or supply the patented service;
Enforces patents but has no manufacturing or research base;
Focuses its efforts solely on enforcing patent rights; or
Asserts patent infringement claims against non-copiers or against a large industry that is composed of non-copiers.
I mean, sure, they respond to one of the criteria any time they buy a patent and later use it in a complaint that includes many patents, both homegrown and acquired. But I think it's reasonable to say that the rest of the criteria are a lot more egregious, especially when a company fits most or all of them.
You left out the part where it says that a patent troll can be defined by any of these points. Therefore only quoting the one I did was enough to define Microsft and Apple as patent trolls.
But that's obvious. The point here is that patent trolling exists on a spectrum. While Apple and Microsoft may have a tenuous qualification, when I say patent troll most people who follow this stuff will think Nathan Myhrvold, not Steve Jobs.
It's same way that calling both a jaywalker and a burglar criminals just because both have committed acts against the law dilutes the word "criminal."
So when Apple and Microsoft buy bankrupted company's patents and use them to sue Google, they are not patent trolling? What are they then? Innovating? This is plain patent trolling and make those two companies effective patent trolls no matter how you try to turn the story. Even if they are innovating on other fronts. Just like I can save someone's life one day and kill someone the next day. That doesn't mean I'm not a killer because I'm a humanist on a good day.
You're doing an admirable tap-dance to preserve your Google partisanship here. Apple may have acquired patents before this but I'm having a hard time finding support for your assertion that they're trolling with those alone. Or even applying them at all as part of their patent litigation, as raganwald has pointed out elsewhere.
Consider these patents cited in Apple's HTC complaint:
Steve Jobs and Scott Forestall are mentioned as inventors in some, and plenty more are attributed to one Bas Ording, who is a UI designer at Apple.
Even if fully half of Apple's patents in this complaint were acquired from an outside source, I have a hard time begrudging them their application of patent law in the protection of a business that makes a real product that required significant investment to create.
Who's doing the tap-dance? First I said that this was patent trolling:
> Purchases a patent, often from a bankrupt firm, and then sues another company by claiming that one of its products infringes on the purchased patent;
You disagreed, then I demonstrated that it was patent trolling. So, doing you little tap-dance, you're now saying that Apple never did that. Funny huh? As for the patents that Apple is suing HTC over, they are ridiculous just like any software patent as explained by many people (including Bill Gates and Larry Ellison) and others who pioneered modern computer science:
Regardless, Apple and Microsoft have been attacking other companies by using their patents, some which were bought and that, my friend, is patent trolling.
Enforces patents against purported infringers without itself intending to manufacture the patented product or supply the patented service;
Enforces patents but has no manufacturing or research base;
Focuses its efforts solely on enforcing patent rights; or
Asserts patent infringement claims against non-copiers or against a large industry that is composed of non-copiers.
I mean, sure, they respond to one of the criteria any time they buy a patent and later use it in a complaint that includes many patents, both homegrown and acquired. But I think it's reasonable to say that the rest of the criteria are a lot more egregious, especially when a company fits most or all of them.