When I made the decision to take my experience managing roofing, siding, and gutter crews and turn it into a technology startup – CompanyCam – I knew it was going to be difficult. Whether it was developing the technology, securing funding, growing our customer base, or any of the other daily barriers that come with starting a business, we faced new challenges every step of the way. I wasn’t naive: I knew that building something new was going to take a lot of hard work. What I never expected was to become the target of a patent infringement extortion scheme.

Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened when I received news out of the blue that I was being sued. I am no lawyer, but when I read the first letter it sounded like complete nonsense to me. I was being sued by a group based in Delaware, alleging that I infringed upon their patent for organizing digital photos – a patent so broad that it was basically meaningless. If this could apply to my app – which allows crews to share information from job sites – then it could apply to almost any other product or technology that involves photos.

I eventually learned that this lawsuit came from a patent troll, a shell company that doesn’t create anything, but instead purchases low-quality patents to target businesses like mine and get a quick payout. It turns out that this particular patent troll had tried to assert the same patent 46 times and had been involved in hundreds of other meritless infringement claims.

I had a decision to make, pay a settlement to make the lawsuit go away, or fight against what I knew was a bogus claim. For a rapidly growing business, this is not an easy decision. At this point I didn’t have just myself to worry about, I had to think about the wellbeing of my employees. Entering litigation is risky. Even if we won, paying for a legal defense was still going to cost us and having open litigation, even if you are in the right, creates a huge amount of uncertainty for a business trying to attract new partners and investors. In addition to the financial cost, there would also be a time and mental energy burden placed on our employees when we had so many other things to prioritize.

Patent trolls know all this. That is why they often go after emerging businesses like CompanyCam, which may not be in as strong a position to fight back as other more established companies. They are willing to bet that many of us will decide to pay tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid a headache and risk of litigation that may end in bankruptcy.

Despite the risk, I felt obligated to fight back. At some point when a bully comes along you have to make the decision to stand up for yourself. I was lucky enough to find Lamkin IP Defense, an expert firm which specializes in fighting these types of claims, and we ultimately won in court – with the judge agreeing that the patent was so weak that it never should have never been granted in the first place.

Even though we won, it still came at a cost. We had to devote time and resources to hiring a legal team to represent us and despite the fact that the judge ordered the plaintiff to pay our legal fees, we still haven’t seen that money because the patent troll structured itself in a way that made it difficult to collect. This experience had tangible consequences for CompanyCam. I know for a fact that if we did not have to deal with this case, we would have been able to expand our sales team and grow more quickly.

Ours is just one case, but the same thing happens over and over again to startups across the country. Small businesses are bearing the brunt of a broken patent system. Our lawmakers need to recognize the damage that bad actors with low-quality patents are causing businesses like CompanyCam and remedy the loopholes in our patent system that give all the leverage to patent trolls and leave small businesses to fend for themselves. I hope that sharing our story helps call attention to the need to make the patent system work for small businesses, instead of patent trolls.

Luke Hansen is the CEO and Founder of CompanyCam in Lincoln, Nebraska.

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