Los Angeles-based electronic records provider MMR Global, Inc. announced that it had obtained its fifth online medical records patent pertaining to EHRs and PHRs, which includes patents on document management and scanning systems. According to the announcement, MMR now has contacted and offered licenses on their patents to more than 1,000 hospitals, group practices and others, and has signed license agreements valued at more than $30 million. Despite these actions, MMR claims that it is not a patent troll seeking to financially gain from someone else's patent, since the patents are part of its "core products."
Patent trolls are patent holding companies whose sole purpose is to own and enforce intellectual property rights without actually practicing the invention. They are becoming more prevalent in the healthcare industry with the proliferation of high-tech products, such as EHRs and picture archiving and communication systems (PACS). Announcement