Profiting from strategic legal activities: Implication from non-practicing entities

This paper is to disclose NPEs´ patent portfolios internationally. The operation of NPEs has aroused impacts on society, and its patents have been considered as valuable patents, which are more valuable than ITC patents and litigated patents. The value of NPE patents is not occasionally. Hence, this paper uses application & publication of nations, and NPE patents applied under PCT procedures, NPE patents in patent families to find how NPEs withhold patents internationally as their patent portfolios. There are 28,846 NPE patents found by twelve NPEs in Patstat database from 1976 to 2013. Three contributions found in this study; 1) NPEs prefer patents from developing countries comparing the application conditions around the world 2) PCT patents occupied in third place of NPE patents, which implies that NPE patents prefer hold patents published internationally. 3) The patent families, which include NPE patent members, have at least 25% patent families with its patent members publishes in U.S., Japan, and Europe. Lastly, this paper displays that NPEs withhold patents strategically and internationally.