It looks as if “patent trolls” are going to lose a big one.

The Supreme Court announced this month that it would hear two appeals of decisions by the federal appeals court that oversees all patent cases. In each case, the company that was sued for patent infringement won on the merits but did not prevail in having its legal fees paid by the losing party.

The court will decide whether to make it much easier for victors in patent suits to force their opponents to pay their legal fees. If it does so — and patent watchers generally assume that the court would not have agreed to hear the appeals if at least some justices were not sympathetic to the companies being sued — that could make it much more expensive to file a frivolous suit, and perhaps scare patent holders away from filing meritorious suits. Losing such a suit could conceivably bankrupt a small company if it was forced to pay the other side’s legal bills, which can run into the millions of dollars.

There are two ways to look at many types of civil litigation. Is the plaintiff’s lawyer seeking to defend the rights of his client, and perhaps those in similar situations? Or is the lawyer abusing the process in the hope of forcing a settlement out of a company that prefers to avoid the costs of litigation?

In recent years, it is the latter view that has tended to prevail, in the Supreme Court and, to some extent, in Congress. In the 1990s, it became harder to bring a class-action suit alleging securities fraud. Court decisions and a law passed in 1995 made it much easier for defendants to have cases dismissed before the plaintiff could gather any evidence from the defendant. And the court ruled that only the government — not a fraud victim — could file suit for aiding and abetting a fraud.