The significance of Patent Assertion Entities (also known as «Patent Trolls ») for the patent system has increasingly been gaining momentum in recent years. PAEs´ business activities embrace the search for patents for acquisition, search for infringers of these patents and, finally, enforcement of the respective patent rights. Research on PAEs, especially regarding the first two activities as mentioned before, is widely lacking. Based on ten original qualitative cases and the attention-based view of the firm, this paper, hence, strives to shed light on the question of how PAEs search patents being potentially relevant for them as well as the infringers of these patents. Thus grounded, we develop four archetypes of PAEs from an attention-based view. By doing so, we are offering a more fine-grained view on PAEs and display, how patent holders, potential target firms of PAEs as well as policy makers can act and react towards them.