First trillion-dollar “patent troll”: Broadcom is more profitable and several times more valuable than anyone with an active assertion program ever was

Context:

• Broadcom’s new Germany-wide standard-essential patent (SEP) injunction against Renault (February 6, 2026 ip fray article) was one of 16 SEP news items we had this week (see the complete list on LinkedIn). The latest news is that Renault told Reuters it would appeal. But Broadcom is now very close to striking a license deal. Renault can try to get the Munich injunction stayed. That won’t be easy, and even if it happened, sooner or later Broadcom will prevail.
• This week we also discovered a deal between Broadcom and Spain’s Telefónica (February 5, 2026 LinkedIn post by ip fray).
• Another famous example of a European company ending up paying Broadcom is the approximately $1B deal between Volkswagen and Broadcom in the late 2010s, after an injunction based on a patent Nintendo later proved invalid.
• Broadcom is exacerbating Europe’s massive IP trade deficit vis-à-vis the U.S. and digital colonization by the U.S. (January 1, 2026 ip fray article).

Further analysis: Broadcom is keeping a low profile for its patent licensing program, being even less willing to talk than Apple was during the Smartphone Patent Wars, presumably because it is a large operating company that finds itself on the receiving end of lawsuits (sometimes indirectly as its customers get sued) and doesn’t want to be seen as the aggressive enforcer it actually is.

There has not been any significant discussion in the media (prior to this article). But here are some mind-blowing facts followed by more numbers, charts, and history:

• Broadcom is the first trillion-dollar company to actively and aggressively monetize patents. It is several times more valuable than Microsoft and IBM were when those companies operated active patent licensing & assertion programs, and also several times more valuable than Qualcomm ever was.
• Broadcom is not among the top 5 U.S. tech companies, yet it is about as valuable as the entire European technology sector. In terms of revenues as well as patents, Broadcom is strong in fields in which Europe is (though it cannot afford to be) weak.
• Broadcom wants royalties from its peers (it settled with Tesla, and has been suing Netflix for years without a breakthrough so far) but also from companies whose market capitalizations are dwarfed by Broadcom’s, such as Telefónica and Renault.