How patent trolls work is that they take a patent they own, which can sometimes be rather vague, and sue a company (or multiple companies) over it. The reason they do it is because most of the time companies would much prefer to settle it rather than drag it out in a long-drawn legal battle.However it seems that in the case of Kaspersky, the patent troll ended up paying them money instead. In a report from ArsTechnica, it seems that Kaspersky was hit with a lawsuit by a company called Wetro Lan, who alleged that Kaspersky had infringed upon a patent related to firewalls. It seems that Wetro Lan had success with that patent as many companies sued by them apparently settled within a short amount of time, but not in the case of Kaspersky whose lawyers were adamant about not paying them a single cent.
According to Kaspersky’s lead lawyer Casey Kniser, Wetro Lan’s settlement demands kept dropping from their initial demand of $60,000 all the way down to $10,000. However Kniser held firm and actually told them that they should pay Kaspersky $10,000 instead, where eventually Wetro Lan agreed to drop the case and pay the company $5,000.
Kniser told Ars, “From our point of view, we had a winning case. We had invalidity contentions that were good. For that effort, we didn’t want to pay them money. It didn’t seem fair that they should be able to just walk away.”