US antitrust enforcers are getting mighty interested in patent trolls. The Federal Trade Commission has even taken to calling these lawsuit-happy companies "patent assertion entities," or PAEs.

"There's a possibility of competitive harm here," said Joseph Wayland, who was the head of antitrust enforcement at the Justice Department until last week. Wayland just left the government for private practice, and he told the Wall Street Journal there is "huge energy, particularly at a senior level" being spent on scrutinizing the intersection of patents and antitrust.

The FTC and the Department of Justice announced today they will host a public forum on December 10 to study the issue more closely. The speakers include IP lawyers, law professors specializing in these so-called PAEs, and even officers of high-profile patent trolls like Intellectual Ventures and Round Rock Research LLC. Executives from companies that have been critical of patent-holding companies, such as Cisco and Rackspace, will also be featured.

"There has been a great deal of controversy and disagreement about whether they stifle innovation and whether they are an anticompetitive problem," FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz told WSJ. "What we want to do is understand the industry better."

Historically, antitrust enforcers have a hard time in court when they come up against patents. For years, the FTC has been trying to shut down so-called "pay to play" settlements, where branded drug companies pay off their generic competitors to end patent challenges. But those arguments have continually lost in appeals courts, where judges have ruled the companies' behavior is protected because of their patents.