[mchannon]

Probably not. US Patents are the cheapest patents to get.

If, say, a German company infringed on a US Patent by selling to a customer in France, that would be completely legal, unless the US Patentholder also had a French patent, which is often not the case. They'd have to prosecute in French court as well, which, given the size of France's market vs. the US, would be Pyrrhic (with a capital P) at best.

The calculus for being a patent troll requires a bizarre confluence of factors (size of market, expense of litigation, certainty of litigation, cost of patents, venue procedures) that are likely to limit the phenomenon to the US.

[Kelbit]

Other countries also have a loser-pays-costs rule for lawsuits, so the risk to NPEs are much higher if they lose an expensive case.

[realusername]

And also software patents are non-existent in the EU as far as I know so it would not work at all.