State Attorney General George Jepsen has joined 42 other states in supporting a proposal by the Federal Trade Commission to collect information about so-called patent trolls.
Technically called patent assertion entities, or PAEs, patent trolls acquire patents for the sole purpose of using them to obtain license fees or financial settlements from those who infringe upon the patents.
“What we’ve seen in Connecticut and beyond are complaints from small business owners and nonprofit directors who have done nothing wrong and yet find themselves facing potentially expensive patent litigation if they don’t pay up,” Jepsen said in a statement.
He said the FTC’s proposal to study the corporate legal structure of trolls, as well as the types of patents they hold, would help Congress better control “abusive patent practices.”
