Patent troll
A company that makes nothing, buying patents in order to sue those who do.
The polite term is NPE, non-practicing entity. "Troll" was popularised around 1999 by Intel lawyer Peter Detkin, after he had himself been sued for libel by a patent holder. The business model rests on litigation costing millions even when the defendant wins, so settling for just under the cost of a trial is the rational move. Vague software patents on things like "a shopping cart on a web page" fit perfectly.
For years the cases piled up in East Texas, in small towns like Marshall with juries seen as friendly to patent holders. Two US Supreme Court rulings choked the flow: Alice v. CLS Bank in 2014 made abstract software patents harder to defend, and TC Heartland in 2017 forced plaintiffs to sue where a company actually lives. Newegg became famous for refusing to settle on principle.