Patent Trolling - a career? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Patent trolling is a huge problem. What if you wanted to join the profiting side?
How much do patent trolls make compared to biglaw? How do you hire into them - do they show up at OCI's?
Anyone know how Intellectual Ventures hires IP lawyers?

[LawSchoolWannaBe]

If you want to work on plaintiff's patent work (not necessarily trolling, though many will label almost anyone asserting patents as a troll), there are plenty of small to medium sized firms out there that do that.

If you actually want to join up with the companies actually asserting patents, that might be a hit harder. They don't have many in house attorneys, and the ones that they do have usually have plenty of experience before moving in house.

As for how much a troll makes...the party asserting the patents may make lots of cash, but that doesn't mean their employees or outside attorneys do. Lots of times the outside attorneys are working on contingency, which can end up being pretty profitable, but most of that money will go to partners at the firms. At some firms that do plaintiff's work for patent cases, pay can be equal or better to that of biglaw firms.

[Anonymous User]

My fiance works at a firm that had a bad reputation as a patent troll, but has turned their company around. They now do more due diligence and are more selective in which cases to litigate. The attorneys all make a ton due to how well their stock is doing. Almost all of them have bought new luxury cars in the last year (Jag XKr, porsche carreras4, Audi a8, etc). I don't know how their hours are, but my fiance with them on the business development side and he maxes out at 40 hours a week. I don't think they go to any OCIs and generally don't hire students straight out of law school, but they did have a summer associate from our school last summer (he is now a 2L summer at a big patent firm).

[Gecko of Doom]

Somebody was listening to NPR today.

[Anonymous User]

Somebody was listening to NPR today.

OP here: Lol, yes. Actually a current coworker of mine showed it to me when I told him I was going to quit to go to law school. He probably did it hoping to deter me or to inspire me to fix the system. Clearly, I took it a different way.