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Inventor Brandon Shalton was in the process of testing his invention, which would digitize phone messages and post them instantly to his church’s website, when he received a demand letter from Acacia Research Corporation. The letter claimed that Shalton’s invention infringed an Acacia patent and demanded a license payment under the threat of litigation. Faced with the high cost and uncertainty of litigation, Mr. Shalton did what many small- and medium-sized inventors and businesses have chosen to do when faced with a broad and threatening patent-infringement demand letter: He abandoned his invention. The 2011 passage of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) represented the most significant patent reform in over half a century and an earnest attempt by Congress to foster innovation and patent rights while discouraging frivolous patent-infringement claims. Alas, only a few years removed from the passage of the AIA, there is already a growing consensus among industry insiders and those in Washington D.C. that more needs to be done to prevent bad-faith patent-infringement claims. This Note will explore the growing trend of bad-faith patent-infringement assertions, commonly referred to as “patent trolling,” in the context of proposed and enacted state and federal responses to the systematic threat patent trolls pose to the innovation economy.