All were from trolls/non-practicing entities except for one (which we settled). As soon as we went public, we became a target.

It would come in the form of:

"Hello, we are XYZ company are you are infringing on 1,324 of our patents related to computing and to communicating over USB - we would be happy to not move forward with our lawsuit for the sum of $500,000"

We called it the reverse nigerian prince.

It protected us from the vast majority of trolls - and it really came down to the "thump" test. The thump test is when company A asserts patents against company B. Company A comes storming in the court room (or via plain ole email) and drops it's stack of patents on top of the table. We now have to invalidate each and every claim which puts the vast majority of the burden on us. We would then turn around and drop our borrowed patent portfolio on the desk and it would thump pretty loud as well. That stopped 95% of the major patent lawsuits from moving forward, as stupid as it was. We took an aggressive stance to counter-sue for patent infringement and ALSO to invalidate via prior-art. Instead of sharks smelling blood in the water, we stopped getting the lawsuits because we aggressive sought to not only stop a lawsuit, but to invalidate the patent from ever being asserted again due to prior art which could be applied in any future patent lawsuit case (and in some instances, would invalidate the patent or have it "re-examined")

Unfortunately, I feel there is still a very vulnerable phase of small business between profitable and not profitable enough to employ these strategies. As the MJs of the world (~$200M market cap) start to adapt - the trolls simply get change their nigerian email to $100,000 instead of $500,000 and start working their way down to smaller companies.

[1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121220/02365821447/intel...