While everyone has been fixated on patent trolls, experts say a different breed of abusive intellectual-property litigants have been making a comeback: businesses that assert dubious patents for strategic reasons.

The U.S. Supreme Court has handed down a pair of decisions that could make it more difficult to bring patent infringement claims in some circumstances, further hampering suits brought by so-called “patent trolls.”

A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling involving a classic Hollywood film may have dealt a knockout punch to a commonly used affirmative defense in a much broader range of cases, including patent litigation.

U.S. Supreme Court rulings giving federal District Court judges more flexibility in awarding attorney fees to prevailing parties in patent suits could help curb the recent uptick in abusive patent litigation.