More stuff to consider. Big companies do NOT like to sue small ones, and they especially don't like to sue people who don't have a lot of money. Three reasons: 1) there's nothing to win if they prevail in court, and 2) the jury may suspect they're trying to squash the little guy, and 3) big companies trade on the size of the pile of their patents, not on particular ones, so they don't really want to test the validity of any given patent. (Also, companies who have to routinely fight the "monopoly" label have an even bigger incentive not to make ugly noises in public.)
But big companies also have a legitimate duty to protect their intellectual property, so they really do wrestle with these questions, there's seldom any knee-jerk when-in-doubt-sue-them. You and I may well think a lot of these software patents are embarrassingly bogus (and I can testify with great certainty that the same is true in the hardware world) but the folks who are paid to protect them are generally not the ones who created them in the first place, so they are not embarrassed. I believe the only way forward is to innovate faster than the wave of patent froth and don't let it hold you back. -BobC I am sure that Microsoft is quietly waiting for the day when one Open Source company sues another. Maybe they are even setting up their own 'front' company to do just this. If they could somehow tie up the Linux Code in litigation, they could conceivably stop Linux (however unlikely). Mike
