Once upon a time, Abraham Lincoln famously said that the patent system was intended to secure "to the inventor, for a limited time, the exclusive use of his invention; and thereby added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius, in the discovery and production of new and useful things."

In recent times, there have been concerns that the patent system been abused by opportunistic companies known by the phrase "patent trolls". It has been alleged that such entities have stunted innovation and spurred unnecessary patent litigation.

There have been particular fears about the rise of "patent trolls" in the field of information technology. Peter Dekin, an assistant general counsel at Intel, first popularised the phrase "patent troll" to describe firms, which acquired patents only to extract settlements from companies on dubious infringement claims: "A patent troll is somebody who tries to make a lot of money off a patent that they are not practising and have no intention of practising and in most cases never practised."