The tech boom has been great for innovation, benefiting large companies like Apple and Google as well as Northern California's economy as a whole.

However, it has also been a "great time" for patent litigation and those who buy up patents in hopes of litigating and then profiting off of unknowing and sometimes small startups.

The solution for a few years was to simply negotiate and settle patent suits, but after 2005, when patent suits almost doubled, the task of negotiating with companies that bought patents and litigated them – called Non Practicing Entities or NPEs – became more difficult.

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