Does media coverage attract patent trolls?

This paper investigates the impact of media coverage on the nonpracticing entity (NPE) patent litigation to the defendant firms. Using a sample of high-tech and patent intensive firms from the U.S. market between 2000 and 2019, we find that the highly visible firms are vastly targeted by the NPEs. This result is more pronounced when the firms are large and experience positive sentiment in the market. We ensure the causality of this relationship by using Anti-troll law targeted to curb the threat of NPE trolls as a natural experiment and distance from the nearest news branch as an instrumental variable. We also find that after suing the target firms, the return of the plaintiff or the NPE firm goes up. Our results provide a new insight into the effect of media coverage on firms’ litigation environment