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Comment by ct4ul4u | Hacker News Reader

It's not a patent troll when a competitor goes after you with patents they acquired doing R&D for real products. The patents sound like they shouldn't have been issued, but that's a different problem.

A troll has no real business other than acquiring patents and suing companies (or arranging for them to be sued).

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I think this is semantics. You don't have to be a patent troll-an entity like you describe with no other real business, in order to go patent trolling.

MS is trying to be a troll under the bridge for Salesforce, and if you look at the patents, they are so broad and non-innovative that using them in an offensive manner constitutes trolling.

I don't think you can evaluate this by looking at the patents. If your sole business is patent suits, you're going to sue every time. If your business has paying customers, there's a chance you're going to spend more of your attention on them than your patent portfolio.

I kind-of thought that was what a patent-troll did these days: get as many wide-ranging patents as possible, no matter whether they should've been granted, and use them to either batter the competition (i.e. with license fees or unending court battles) or getting your "cut" with little actual effort... ?

Patent trolls have traditionally been groups whose only (or just main) business/source of income comes from buying up patents and suing over them.

Today people tend to apply 'patent troll' to situations where they feel that the plaintiff is 'trolling' the defendant through the use of patent law. This is applied more-so when the patents are thought to be invalid or the business reasons for filing suit are deemed to be anti-competitive.

Maybe this is just the ol' good MS trying to get more customers to its Microsoft Dynamics business solutions.

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