Gonna DIG into that one and add it. Would you know if the patents killed are then given in another form to another company?
If the PTAB invalidates a patent after the fact, which is what they do, there is no more patent.
One of the more outrageous aspects of this is that anyone can file an IPR, an inter partes review, which is the challenge that can invalidate an existing patent. That means that hedge funds can file IPRs. And there is no limit to the number of IPRs that can be filed. Patent owners can be forced to defend themselves over and over and over.
The companies that pushed for the AIA and the PTAB even have a name for their policy of stealing intellectual property and defying the patent owners to get paid- they call it “Efficient Infringement”. That is a fancy way of saying that it costs them less to openly steal and defend themselves in court, than it is to pay the inventors for the IP that they are using. One of the foremost practitioner’s of this shameless corporate theft is Rush’s very favorite tech company.