Several tech companies decided to team up and reduce the number of infringement lawsuits that cost them millions of dollars. The idea is to purchase patents for technologies all members of the “Allied Security Trust” are planning on using, but things won’t come cheap.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the companies will pay around $250,000 to join the organization, and around $5 million more as a deposit for future patent purchases, which means only the big names will afford to join.

Among the members of the Allied Security Trust, the names of Verizon Communications, Google, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Ericsson, Motorola, Sun Microsystems came up, but the invitations are open (for those who can afford it).

The recent years have brought a number a lawsuits that got big companies (which are the most targeted) wondering how they can prevent that. This is especially important for them, as acquiring intellectual property to extract royalties from others is a thriving business at the moment.

A large number of companies, called “patent trolls,” choose to “feed” on patent infringement lawsuits, despite the fact that they do not operate in that particular business. However, the fact that they own patents wins them millions of dollars from the tech companies they sue.

The best example is of course the case of Research In Motion, who has been sued by NTP for using technology that NTP owned. The lawsuit lasted four long years, and RIM was forced to pay $612.5 million in a settlement with NTP in order to avoid getting its BlackBerry e-mail service shut down.

This isn’t the first attempt tech companies have made in order to prevent patent infringement lawsuits. Moreover, tech companies have also tried to convince the Senate to make changes to the patent-law in order to avoid being sued by “patent trolls.”