The NPE is a middle man--it allows the inventor to cash out now, and recoups it's investment by doing all of the things the inventor himself could have done anyway. There is a value to allowing the inventor to cash out immediately with an NPE instead of taking the time to find a suitable buyer who will actually use the patent.
There is a value to allowing the inventor to cash out immediately with an NPE instead of taking the time to find a suitable buyer who will actually use the patent.
If the NPE actually does do work to find a buyer, so that he buys the patent for, say, $700 million but then sells it a year later, say, for $1.5 billion to a manufacturer, then I agree; the NPE in that case is adding value by doing "brokering" work that the original inventor didn't want to do, and was willing to take a quicker exit at a lower valuation to avoid.
But it seems to me that patent troll companies are buying patents with the explicit intention of doing nothing with them other than extracting fees and/or settlements, i.e., that they are adding no value.
