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Presumably with the exception of counter-suing companies that have sued you? Companies build patent portfolios so that other companies will be wary of suing them for fear of being counter-sued (simplification). If being a member of this pool removed your ability to even act defensively, I don't think it would achieve its goals.

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I understood it as the company or the pool could counter-sue with the entire pool rather then just the portfolio originally owned by the company.

Exactly. Joining the pool effectively signs away your rights to make offensive lawsuits, in exchange for gaining the rights of the entire pool for defensive purposes.

Patent Trolls do not make or sell any products so it would not be possible to counter sue them.

You're right about patent trolls, but this would allow those companies to have access to a vast amount of patents, so it should become harder for patent trolls to sue any of them, although far from impossible.

But the patent pool would be mostly so those companies don't sue each other. So many companies in the tech industry are suing each other right now. It's ridiculous.

Having access to a large patent pool provides zero protection against NPEs ("patent trolls").

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