This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, I spoke with Kristen Osenga, who is a Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Richmond School of Law. Kristen is a familiar voice to many in the patent community. She has been a regular participant in serious conversations about patent law, standard essential patents (SEPs), antitrust, competition policy, injunctions, and the broader innovation ecosystem.

Osenga is a bit of a unicorn. As an academic who is openly pro-property rights, pro-patent, and pro-innovator, she is unique. This matters not only because she stands out in a positive way, but because she is relentless in pushing back against the great tide of modern patent scholarship that always seems to start from a position of skepticism toward patent owners. Too often, patents are treated as a problem to be constrained rather than a property right designed to incentivize risk, disclosure, commercialization, and investment. Osenga’s work pushes back against that narrative. As she explains in our conversation, much of her scholarship asks a deceptively simple set of questions: What are we missing? What are we getting wrong? And why do so many debates about patent law begin with assumptions that do not match the reality of innovation?

Osenga did not begin her career as an academic. Like many patent lawyers, she started in engineering. She originally wanted to build prosthetic legs, discovered she was not especially well-suited to mechanics, and moved into electrical engineering. Eventually, after a Society of Women Engineers conference introduced her to the idea of patent law, she went to law school. From there she practiced at Finnegan, one of the leading IP boutiques in the country, and later clerked for Judge Richard Linn of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

That practical foundation was important. Osenga explained that her time in practice gave her “a real respect for patent owners.” This is emblematic of precisely the kind of real-world grounding too often absent from patent policy debates. Academics who move straight from law school into academia can spend entire careers writing about patent owners without ever working with one, representing one, or even knowing one. This is no doubt why so many academics do not seem to understand how patent decisions affect actual companies, inventors, investors, and commercialization strategies.

Of course, this disconnect between the real world and policy positioning is not limited to academics. As I mentioned during our conversation, judges and policymakers also increasingly seem detached from the practical consequences of patent rulings. They may understand doctrine in the abstract, but not always how the doctrine operates in the marketplace. That gap between theory and practice has done enormous damage to patent enforcement over the last 15 years.

Osenga’s current scholarship is trying to fill that gap. One major project examines who is actually suing whom in patent litigation. That sounds basic, but it is astonishing how much patent policy has been built on incomplete or skewed assumptions about patent litigation. The dominant frame has long been the “patent troll” narrative. Patent trolls are bad; patent trolls sue operating companies; therefore, patent enforcement must be restricted. That is the story. But as Osenga explained, the real landscape is more complicated. Litigation can involve large companies suing large companies, small companies suing large companies, large companies suing small companies, universities enforcing patents, startups trying to survive, and non-practicing entities with very different business models and litigation behavior.

The failure to distinguish among these substantially different categories has produced bad policy. As I said in our conversation, the best definition of a patent troll remains: the patent owner who is suing me. But that cannot be the basis for serious legal reform. There were, of course, abusive litigation behaviors that deserved attention—mass demand-letter campaigns, nuisance settlements, and attempts to extract small payments based on weak patents. But the policy response targeted status rather than conduct. Instead of focusing on bad behavior, the debate morphed into suspicion of patent owners who do not manufacture products as if research and developing cutting edge technology is somehow wrong, or an immoral business choice.

Osenga agreed, saying that what should have mattered was “your litigation behavior, not the fact you make nothing.” That is exactly right. A university does not manufacture products. An individual inventor may not manufacture products. A startup may invent foundational technology but lack capital, distribution, regulatory capacity, or manufacturing infrastructure. Their product is the invention. Their business model may depend on licensing. That does not make them illegitimate. In many cases, it makes them precisely the kind of innovators the patent system was designed to protect.

This is where the troll narrative became especially destructive. Large implementers had every incentive to characterize small patent owners as abusive. Nobody likes being sued, and the largest technology companies in the world are no exception. But these companies are not neutral guardians of the public interest. They are commercial actors. As Osenga put it bluntly, “companies are in business to make money.” That premise should be obvious, but too much patent policy ignores it.

Large companies know what is best for large companies. That does not mean they know what is best for the patent system, for startups, for universities, or for individual inventors. Yet over and over again, policymakers have accepted the implementer narrative as though it were an objective assessment of innovation policy. The result has been a steady erosion of patent enforcement, from limitations on injunctions after eBay to hostility toward non-practicing entities, skepticism toward damages, repeated attacks on the ITC, and efforts to weaken remedies for SEP owners.

Our conversation naturally turned to SEPs, FRAND licensing, and competition policy—areas where Kristen has done significant work. The implementer story in the SEP context is powerful because it is simple: patent owners charge too much, royalties increase consumer prices, and products would be cheaper if implementers could avoid or reduce royalty obligations. That story sounds plausible to the public. It is also incomplete and misleading.

As I explained, the royalty stack on a smartphone is a tiny fraction of the product price. The same is true in connected vehicles, where a relatively modest royalty may cover technologies that enable connectivity, displays, cameras, infotainment systems, and other standard-driven features. Consumers are told patents make products expensive, but they are rarely told how little of the final price is attributable to royalties—or how much of the product’s functionality depends on patented technology in the first place.

Osenga made the point well: “Your phones wouldn’t have cool technology if we broke these patents.” That is the part of the story implementers prefer not to tell. Patents are not merely costs to be minimized. They are incentives that support the research, development, disclosure, and standardization processes that make modern technology interoperable and commercially useful.

We also discussed the recurring misconception that patents are monopolies. This is one of the most persistent and damaging errors in public discourse. Patents are exclusive rights, but that does not mean every patent confers market power, much less an economic monopoly. Most patents never cover commercially successful products. Many protect technologies can be designed around. Some are blocked by later improvements. Others never generate revenue at all. Yet the monopoly label continues to do enormous rhetorical damage because it invites policymakers, courts, and the public to see patents as inherently suspect.

This is why Osenga’s scholarship is so important. She is not merely defending patents as doctrine. She is challenging the assumptions that have distorted the patent debate. Her work on patent enforcement, SEP policy, SDOs, FRAND, injunctions, and litigation patterns all returns to the same basic point: policy should be based on how innovation actually works, not on slogans.

As she said near the end of our conversation, “people can understand patents.” That is the reason to keep engaging. Judges can understand patents. Staffers can understand patents. Policymakers can understand patents. The public can understand patents. But they will not understand them if the only story they hear is that patents are monopolies, patent owners are trolls, implementers are victims, and free licensing is costless. It is up to all of us to keep telling the story and trust that those who need to understand can and will understand.

Strong patent rights remain essential because innovation is not free. Research, development, standardization, and regulatory approval all costs money. And when innovators cannot capture value from what they create, the next round of innovation becomes harder—if not impossible—to fund.

The patent system does not need more slogans. It needs better facts, better definitions, and better policy judgment. Kristen Osenga’s work is helping provide exactly that.

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