A patent troll doesn’t quite confess

Jim Turley, the former CEO of patent-licensing firm Patriot Scientific, provided the comic relief. At the outset of his speech, dubbed “Confessions of a Patent Troll,” he said, “I’ve always believed that power corrupts, and PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.” Turley is once again an analyst at Silicon Insider.

The problem of running an IP business, he says, is that “you have to hold your breath for three years.” That means it takes a long time from the point where you license IP to the point where you can even begin to receive royalties. That’s even when someone has chosen to use your technology willingly and you’re not in a legal fight with them. That’s after half the potential customers simply shut down and fail to get a product out.

“As the IP supplier, you are the last to get paid, from the point when the customer buys the product,” he said. “You should be able to survive as a business with a 50-percent mortality rate for your customers.”

Turley argued for common sense in applying for patents and the same in enforcing them. But he didn’t live up to the title of his talk. No doubt his former employer, litigious as it is, suggested it wasn’t a wise thing for him to tell insider tales on patent trolls.