Sadly, your article regarding the ‘cost of patent trolling’ overlooks the strength of protection that the UK already has against any abusive use of patents by non-practising entities (NPEs).

We have an internationally respected specialist patent court system which weeds out invalid patents and shifts the court costs to the losing party, thus keeping speculative litigants away.

The greatest vice of the current UK system is not the aforementioned NPEs but rather the sheer quantity of patents which arguably should not have been granted in the first place. There is a clear lack of consistency in decision-making between the world’s largest patent offices, which is confounded by the patchwork of international courts.

However, this issue – in Europe at least – will go some way toward being addressed by the introduction of the new Unified Patent Court across Europe in the not too distant future.

Alex Wilson, partner, Powell Gilbert, London EC4