Scott Duke Kominers, Columnist

'Star Wars' Soldier Recruited to Fight Patent Trolls

Bounty hunting is the core of a company's new strategy to repel infringement lawsuits.

May 31, 2017 at 5:13 PM UTC

Scott Duke Kominers is the MBA Class of 1960 Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and a faculty affiliate of the Harvard University department of economics.

Now starring in "Patent Wars."
Photographer: Adam Berry/Getty Images

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Some of the greatest stories reach their climax when a hero who has been hounded by a villain doubles back to give chase, turning the hunter into the hunted. That’s what’s going on now in a fight between Cloudflare, an Internet content-delivery and security company, and Blackbird Technologies, a company that amasses patents for the sake of bringing lawsuits.

While a patent battle might not pump out adrenaline like Luke’s duel with Vader in “Return of the Jedi,” this one might still go down in history – especially since there’s a “Star Wars” bounty hunter involved.