Sentence:  According to this saga of intellectual-property misanthropy, these creatures [patent trolls] roam the business world, buying up patents and then using them to demand extravagant <WSD>payouts</WSD> from companies they accuse of infringing them. Often, their victims pay up rather than face the costs of a legal battle. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  An amount of money paid out.