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USPTO Released List of Top 10 Patent Receivers
prostoalex writes "So who received the most patents in 2004? Despite the frequent publicity around Microsoft's or Amazon's frivolous patents, these two companies are not even on the list. IBM, Matsushita and Canon received the most patents in 2004, followed by HP, Micron, Samsung, Intel, Hitachi, Toshiba and Sony. IBM alone was granted 3,248 patents last year."
They seem to be making all the right moves... thousands of patents, contributions to Open-Source... Jeez. They might be on to something here.
IBM is notorious for making people write papers and patents as part of their job description.
Vote for Pedro
I don't understand how one corporation can have 3,248 original ideas.
Everything that can be invented has been invented.
-- Charles Duell, Director of U.S. Patent Office, 1899
Remember, these companies actually innovated something.
And if you're wondering what the hell Matsushita is, well, they basically own everything.
Working with these two companies closely (lots of PSP and big screen TVs delivered this year), there is one thing that I've noticed with regards to these two companies.
Matsushita is the good guys. They license their technology out at very low prices, and if a competitor invents a similar technology, they are very unlikely to bring down the weight of their patent portfolio on them.
Sony, OTOH, is the typical portfolio protector. They are very difficult to work with because their tight-fistedness with patents and IP means that everything they do needs to be negotiated and agreements have to be made between many different IPR holders just to come up with a new product.
This is also why Matsushita (Panasonic, if you didn't know) is almost universally loved and Sony continues to put out shoddy merchandise.
Therefore patents aren't nearly as evil compared to if Microsoft had won the most! Since the winner is whom I like instead of my established enemy, I'm a Slashbot!
it would be more interesting to see the top 10 software patent list
I knew a guy who did an internship at IBM - I think he helped do internal IT for their boxes. Anyhow, while he was there, he was showing someone a neat trick he did with the init system on the linux boxes, so that it'd start up an interactive shell on a different terminal as soon as possible. The advantage being that if some process held up the boot, you could fix it (ie kill -9). I think dhcp was a big culprit on the distro they were using.
Anyhow, his boss recommended that he get a patent on the change.
So, I'm not too surprised to see them on the list.
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IBM, Matsushita and Canon must be three extremely bright people to have invented so much in a single year!
It's wonderful to see the patent system work so well in protecting the rights of the individual to profit from their inventions.
[caution: this post may contain irony]
Why are people still railing on Amazon? Other than the controversial one-click patent a few years back, what have they done? I just think it's a little farfetched to be putting Amazon into the same "evil empire" category as Microsoft.
Considering that Nikon SLRs are already a lot less advanced (technologically) as compared to their Canon counterparts, I really wonder if Canon's huge portfolio is going to further bite Nikon in their proverbial a$$ :(
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
That and a culture of research and development.
You get a lot of smart people, ask that they publish, and watch what happens.
Add that to the understanding that licensing is just free money for stuff you don't feel like building yourself, and it's very smart.
My mom says I'm cool.
Not even on the list. My, how times change.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
"IBM alone was granted 3,248 patents last year." ...and sold them all to China.
Do Not Eat iPod Shuffle
Considering that patents time out after 17 years I almost agree with you. That's not time for a change in top management to make a thorough change in corporate culture.
But don't lose track of the fact that you can't trust IBM. You can only kind-of trust the people that work for IBM. It's not as bad for IBM to have the patents, because they don't have a rabid rat corporate culture. But that is subject to change. By both sides (though Bill would have to die first).
Still, the fact remains that if there exists a centralized point of control (as, for example, a patent) then it will tend to be siezed by someone who will use it to their personal advantage, and wil ignore any damage they are doing to others. (In fact they may cause damage on purpose in order to reduce the ability of others to compete.)
So patents are, given human nature, inherrently evil. I'll agree that this is a contingent fact, but what it's contingent on is human nature, and that doesn't seem to have changed significantly since language first appeared.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
If you follow the link to USPTO from TFA -- here -- you'll see that the US Govt. has 829 patents for 2004. I find it interesting how/why a government can patent things.
Anyone can explain why the US Govt. patents stuff?
Doomie
3,000+ patents.
Does the USPTO have time to review all of these patents for accuracy/authenticy?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
No idea if this has been mentioned yet, but I ran across an article yeterday that says that IBM is donating 500 of its software patents to the open source community.
Here's hoping this ends up being more than the symbolic public affairs move it resembles on the surface.
Why would anyone on /. think that a company with approx. 300,000 employees, including many of the brightest people in CS, be able to come up with that many ideas?
Why link from itfacts.biz when you can get the same data and a bit more write-up directly from the source? (See the source link on the itfacts.biz site.)
:wq
Interestingly, prostoalex by far has his submissions posted the most -- way more often than Roland. However, nobody ever feels the need to complain about him at all.
I don't know exactly what's going on there, but the fact that Roland, with much less frequent posts, gets such a tsunami of criticism speak volumes.
While looking into this for a post on my blog I came across the same numbers. IBM donating 500 patents seems really lame when they got 1300 this year alone and have led the US for the PAST 12 YEARS. I know IBM is a linux friendly company, but they are still a company and they are still patent happy. Now, it could be that they are protecting themselves from other people patenting their technology but still, it is interesting. I made the analogy that IBMs release of those 500 patents is the technological equivalent of picking through their garbage: they obviouslly don't have use for it anymore.
I have always been taken aback by the argument from my fellow libertarians in favor of users fees. If there is any part of society we don't want operating on greed, it is an institution that has the ability to back up its rules with lethal force and the depravation of liberty and property. Take a good look at what the USPTO is doing today and look at what it used to do when it was paid for with tax revenues only.
I think there is a good libertarian case for why user fees are a terrible idea. I personally favor the use of consumption taxes as an alternative since they are the best of both worlds. They tie the government's revenues to the health of the society and yet they keep the government from gaining a financial incentive to disregard quality of service and ethics.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
The purpose of the patent is to place in the public domain a description of an invention that is detailed enough to allow others to recreate that invention. If patents did not exist, many large corporations would simply choose to hide their inventions from the public. The patent is a contract between the government and the corporation or individual. In exchange for protecting the invention for a limited time, the corporation or individual gives to the people of the United States the entire description of the invention. In this way the people have available to them a vast store of knowledge that would never have become public, inventions that would have gone to the grave with their inventors. I find it odd that so many "open-source" proponents deride the patent when it was in fact the first open-source consortium founded in the new world. I would also like the reader to note that the time period between when a patent is filed and when it is granted is in most cases a period of years rather than months. Most of the erroneous patents I have seen mentioned on Slashdot are considered simplistic simply because of the summary provided by the Slashdot poster. When reading the patent itself, one usually finds that the patent is much more intricate than the poster would like one to believe.
The top patent recipients are actually innovating, leveraging their R&D power and making progress instead of leveraging their lawyer power and hindering progress in legal battles.
Interesting. So, how many patents does IBM have, all in all?
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
So patents are, given human nature, inherrently evil. I'll agree that this is a contingent fact, but what it's contingent on is human nature, and that doesn't seem to have changed significantly since language first appeared.
Reading this for some reason made me come up with a possible correlate. Even if it is not in human nature for _ALL_ people to be greedy (which is the subset of evil that I believe this thread is covering) it would only take a small number of greedy people to start taking advantage of the system. Once they start taking advantage of the system (patents in this case) they then give themselves an additional adge which allows them to take even more advantage, giving them an even larger edge, untill some other mitigating factor comes in to play.
I suppose this concept is strongly supported by the concept of the "tragedy of the commons" in which any shared limited resource will eventually become overexploited, in this case the resource being ideas. Tragedy of the commons is often thrown about in social sciences, eccology and economics and provides an interesting viewpoint on creating government decisions. I say government because by the nature of reality, the individuals involved will never come to an agreement; some judge or authority has to step in and draw boundaries and limits.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
However, have you noticed that in the above post, the pertinant linkage did not go to prostoalex's site? That's the difference.
Ah.. that explains why new microsoft products are lacking any innovative features :D
IBM has been filing patents for many years, and has maintained more or less the same level over the years. On the other hand, four years ago, we did not hear much about Microsoft filing patents. So, their absence in the top 10 is not all that surprising.
How would IBM use its patents? How would Microsoft use its patents?
True, I dislike all patents. I'd rather have a perfect system of government where patents had a lifespan of, say, six months.
But in the real world, I approve of any method of using and abusing government and governmental power, so long as it's by somebody I like. Patents are a loophole in a sense, but loopholes are tools, and like guns or axes or computers, the user defines the tool, not the other way around.
So, patents cannot be evil any more than guns can. But Microsoft can definitely be more evil than IBM.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Remember PanIP?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The most innovative patent this year, I'll bet!
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
MOD PARENT UP!!!
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/13/0 026251
Roland's last posts:
Morse Code Used by Human Cells? - link to his blog
Engineered Enhancers Closer Than You Think - link to his blog
Transparent Transistors Are Coming - link to his blog
DURL, a Search Tool for del.icio.us - link to his blog
IBM Prepares 100-Terabyte Tape Drives - link to his blog
prostoalexs' last posts:
USPTO Released List of Top 10 Patent Receivers - link to stats site
Business Week On Desktop Search Economics - link to Business Week
Start Your Own Open Source-Based Telecom - link to zd
Free Introduction to Networking Book - link to the source
Wireless Security By The Gallon - link to Information Week magazine
See the difference?
Corporations are considered "the good guys" if their corporate culture involves building goodwill through being a good corporate citizen. Goodwill can be monetized as the value of a corporation's trademarks.
There's a difference among a tax-funded agency, a user-fee-funded agency that takes nearly zero tax dollars, and a negatively tax-funded agency. The USPTO is negatively tax-funded; Congress siphons off patent fees to the general treasury. If the USPTO were allowed full use of application fee revenues, it could probably hire examiners to do a more thorough job of checking each patent application against the prior art.
IBM isnt a new company. They've been around for a very long time. They've been granted hundreds of thousands of patents.
"To be is to do." -Socrates
"To do is to be." -Jean-Paul Sartre
"Do-be-do-be-do." -Frank Sinatra
I guess I was unclear. I meant that the difference in how the two are perceived by slashdotters (nobody minds prostoalex; Roland is totally despised) is due to Roland's continued theft of content to fatten his wallet and the shady relationship between Roland and the editor(s).
...when somewhat useless obscure things get patented, it hopefully means that it will be public domain by the time that anything usefull comes out of it... :)
-judging another only defines yourself
I'll give you a clue guys. IBM patented a method of cramming a LOT more data into each inch of hard-drive space. (Pixie dust)
Microsoft patented the double-click (IN 2004!).
I can't resist mentioning this silly episode.
:: "cook").
In July 1992, I was attending an IEEE 802.11 meeting. The company I worked for at the time was making a major series of presentations - "coming out of the closet", as it were, after many months of revealing nothing whatsoever about their WLAN development program.
At one point, the presenter (a colleague of mine) was asked, "Your error correction scheme seems extreme. Do you really think interference in the 2.4 GHz band is going to be that bad?"
My colleague pointed to me (in the audience) and asked me to repeat a remark I had made during a coffee break, where I said, "Well, I've never seen such a thing as a Listen Before Cook microwave oven!"
("Listen Before Talk" was a new phrase coined by one of the committee members to defuse more silliness of arguing over the term "carrier sense", which had a somewhat different meaning to RF engineers as opposed to Ethernet engineers. I found the analogy appropriate -- i.e. "talk"
I got a brief chuckle from the committee, but no mention in the meeting minutes, so the event was lost in obscurity.
However, years later, I was searching for a particular kind of patent for a microwave oven invention I had in mind, when I came across:
Patent No. 6,346,692: "Adaptive Microwave Oven". In brief, this patent describes an invention wherein a microwave oven "listens" to the 2.4 GHz band before turning on its magnetron, on a cycle-by-cycle basis, so as to avoid interference with RF communications in the same spectrum. I.E. "Listen Before Cook." The patent was awarded in 2002 to two persons (presumably) employed by Agere Systems, since Agere is the assignee for this patent.
How's that for prior art?
P.S. My "other" microwave oven invention had to do with "listening to the sound of popping corn" to determine when the pop rate was declining, thereby determining the right time to turn off the oven, avoiding the Blackened Redenbacher Syndrome. Sadly, I was beat to that particular punch -- a broader patent existed that covered "auditory feedback" in controlling microwave oven operation.
What you don't hear about is that fact that to file a patent, one must present the idea in front of a committee (called an Invention Evaluation Board) which does an initial search on the idea and evaluation of business value, then the patent lawyers do their own internal search (before sending to the patent office), then you write up the patent with a lawyer (all the time modifying to take into account any existing work), then IBM sends the patent to the patent office so the patent office can do it's search.
By the time IBM sends out a patent, it's already gone through an exhaustive evaluation by very intelligent people. Patents cost a lot of money to file. IBM has no interest in filing useless patents. And yes, there is a culture that if an idea seems at all novel then file a disclosure because we have such a strong process in place to determine if that idea should become a patent.
And is IBM using it's portfolio to do negatively? Nope. Patents are a necessary evil. Any large company has to file patents to protect itself. Being that IBM is the largest technology company in existance (320,000 employees, revenue of $86 billion a year), it's only fitting that it files the most patents.
Most patents are OK. The ones that we have to watch out for is Software Patents and frivilious Patents.
h tml
IBM is one of the few companies that still does pure research... and make money off of it. IBM could close down it's mainframe business, it's CPU design and fabrication, and eliminate all divisions that have to do with making, reselling, and providing service contracts....
If all they had left was the research division, they still would make a crapload of money.
So it's not suprising that they get lots of patents. They are doing a lot and is actually creating new technology that it resells to other manufacturers.
Take the Cell technology, the Playstation 3, the IBM chip design people and Sony. Sony is going to use IBM for their technology and design resources and experiance, but they are going to manufacture the actual CPU in purely Sony-owned manufacturer facilities.
That's the sort of IBM that is around nowadays.
So IBM gets lots of patents. So what?
What I am curious to know is how many of these patents are for SOFTWARE and their track record. That's what matters.
Also frivolious patents.
How many of IBM patents are like "Method for pressing buttons" or "Virtual Windows" like the type that MS churns out?
I am no IBM fanboy, but I understand that they do engage in more research and developement then any other company in existance. I can be convinced that all these patents are a bad idea in terms of IBM...
But if they aren't for software (which I know some of them are, I am just curious to the percentages and types) and for actual REAL creativity and inventiveness, then all the more power to IBM.
Oh and if you don't understand why software patents in paticular suck, but other patents can be a very good thing. Read thru the documents linked in the following (from the league of programming freedom):
http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/patents.
Despite the frequent publicity around Microsoft's or Amazon's frivolous patents, these two companies are not even on the list.
It's not the quantity that matters, it's quality and topic. I mean, I don't suppose anyone minds when some company developes something useful and patents the stuff. I suppose the most of the granted patents are hardware-related, which -if it's so - I can highly appreciate and have nothing against. The reason so many people complain regarding MS-related (or Amazon, and the like) submitted and/or granted patents are the sometimes even ridiculous nature of what they seem to want to patent (just rememeber "ifnot" and the like).
Eh, but most of you already know all this so you know, I just felt that I have to drop my 2c.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
It is PR because a lot of free software users think well of a company that is apparently doing its best to support free software against the scourge of software patents. But how many of these do know that IBM has been and still is at the forefront of political lobbying for more software patents in the world?
Making free software depend on IBM patents, and making the defense of free software against lawsuits depend on IBM willingness to assert those patents against whoever would sue free software developpers or users (see the IBM pledge : http://www.ibm.com/ibm/licensing/patents/pledgedpa tents.pdf) gives IBM a lot of leverage on whatever happens with free software.
Furthermore, free software has been able to compete successfully with Microsoft, and to contain to some extent Microsoft software power, a thing no corporation was able to do, including IBM.
From an economic perspective, when two economic activities are complementary, and actually done by different corporations, each business sector will try to commoditize the neighboring business so that more money and profit remain available for its own activity. Commoditization of complementary business is also a way to reduce its control, and to be freer ans more secure when it comes to managing a business strategy.
This is the case for software vs services, or for hardware vs software. IBM business is mostly based on hardware and services, and software publishing is only a minor part. But software stand between the two main business activities of IBM, and gives too much leverage to whoever controls software publishing, not to mention the profit. Supporting free software is a way of commoditizing software, and thus leave more control space and profit for IBM. If in addition it gives IBM some control over basic software (especially the operating system), all the better.
So it is IBM best interest to actually get software patents and the control that goes with them, and to make some of those patents available to free software developement.
But, mind you, it is certainly not a gift or a donation. Just good business strategy.
I've found that Sony in general is milking a brand-name... but that cow is beginning to run dry. I haven't seen many sony products that - were they even the same price of their competitors (they're more) - I would buy on a quality basis. They make a lot of stuff that might be considered trendy. Asian students here especially seem to think Vaio is the shiznat, though really the last few of those I saw died sooner and generally sucked more than competitors (no, I'm not racist, my gf is Chinese and between her and her friends I've had my work convincing them that Sony != good).
On the other hand, I won't say I know too much about Matsushita, but I haven't done too badly by their Panasonic division.
I've often wondered about this. This trick I suppose would work well on a Linux box... but IBM doesn't own linux. Can you put a patent on doing something a particular way with a product you don't have ownership over?
If a hack a certain device (say find something really cool to do with a cellphone/PDA/etc that the creators hadn't planned for it), can I patent that even though I didn't make the original device?
Not that I have such a patent, but I've often wondered if this happens.
Patent or Perish
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less travelled by. (Robert Frost, 1916)
If anything, I think that this article shows IBM's donation of 500 patents as a drop in the barrel (though a nice gesture nonetheless). However I do remember that there can be 2 reasons for patenting something:
a) Personal profit based on royalties, etc (or preventing a competitor from reproductions)
b) Not having a competitor patent something. You don't personally have to enforce the patent against somebody... but in the end it's a useful trump card (if somebody applies their own patents against you, you can play yours back) as well as a nice way to reward your allies (if you hold the patent and share, somebody else can't sue your friends over them either).
and patents arent a bad thing.
in the hands of the ex-college kids, they are exclusive patents, to which only they have the rights (or the company they sell the patent to). IBM on the other hand tends to have those patents where its like "isn't this a neat idea? give it a shot!"
usually im more coherent, i just got off cs:s after playing fer like 6-7 hours, lol
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
They don't have 3128 good idea. What typical happen in tec. company is patent everything and see what pan out.
IBM and Microsoft can be equally as evil really. There is no difference on who receives a patent.
:)
Now IBM politics are in favour of free sw just because IBM is now making money out of Linux and Microsoft is losing money because of it.
Whenever it will be the other way around, we'll be all here crying for the evilness of IBM and how M$ could save us all. Really think about what could've happened if OS2 was the winner and Windows the loser.
Probably what now seems so absurd could have been reality.
Patents are evil, whoever receives them. And they are evil both for free sw and for proprietary one. And they are evil both for sw as for hw.
We feel sw patents being more evil just because of the peculiar qualities of sw (being a product with almost no additional costs other than those of the creation of the first prototype), but really hw patents are as evil and sometimes as stupid.
Check behind your Nokia phone, the Sim retention mechanism. Do you really feel that thing needs a patent ? Do you think its mechanic is so smarter to be granted a patent ? Do you feel that patent is much better than the "single click" Amazon patent ? [Don't know if it has been granted the patent and if it's still that kind of mechanism, the last Nokia I had was the 5110 and had two pieces of plastic with the simplest mechanic of this world patent pending]
I think we, as a society, should reconsider the whole patent system. It's effectiveness is changed in its 200 years of life, and its dangers too. Patents were meant to protect IP and R&D investiments, now it's becoming a mean to convert ideas into money without the risks involved in production.
Long post sorry
..English has some different semantics than what's current. In a time before the modern corporate charter had been invented, an author-individual would just be called an author. Likewise for inventors.
Put in question form: Why would you never see anything like "King John I" imprinted on a coin?
Contributing to the industry by publishing also deserves appreciation as opposed to a lot of companies that want to keep most of their R&D company confidential.
At between 9 and 10 patents per day, does anyone know if IBM gets a bulk discount on its fees?
Not sure why the parent has been modded funny. Every year IBM cracks the patent whip demanding tech employees to find something, *anything* that might be patentable - they've got so much invested in being "first-in-patents" that they can't bear to ever come in second place. So they try patenting lots of bullshit - well aware that the Patent Office is broken when it comes to software. It's depressing and embarrassing.
However, have you noticed that in the above post, the pertinant linkage did not go to prostoalex's site? That's the difference.
It does. Do a whois on itfacts.biz.
This is a message board for whining about Microsoft. Please do not attempt to divert our attention. Thank you.
coz den we could find out who is teh evil
It seems /.ers associate the word "patent" with evil. Any company enforcing their patent rights is automatically evil. Well that is just a load of crap. It is true that the patent office needs to completely rethink its patent granting procedure, but without patents the global bussiness model breaks down and we all lose our jobs! That being said...
/. readers dont seem to understand is that patents are not cheap. You need to pay an expensive patent attorney, and the application costs. In the end, a patent frequently costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars each. Add to that the price of R&D and man-hours, and each patent can reprsent over 1M in corporate investment (or much much more).
In many way's IBM is a thinktank. They spend alot of money in researd and development of new technologies. For crying out loud, the PC owes much of its success to IBM R&D.
Why should other companies be allowed to use technologies and ideas that IBM spent time and money developing? Im sure you wouldnt like if I told your boss about an idea you had discussed with me, and passed it off as my own.
IBM makes 650 Million USD on patent royalties annually. Nearly 200M of which comes from hardware manufacturers. Most companies happily pay IBM their royalties. Why? Because they make alot of money from selling technology using IBM-developed ideas. IBM usually charges 1%-5% of the products price as a royalty. Not bad, considering without the IBM patented technology, your product might not be marketable!
Many other companies ($CO, for example), demand high royalties from small companies. IBM, on the other hand, supports open source and has yet to go after a non-profit or small company.
One company IBM *IS* going after is Intuit. Who the hell cares? Does Intuit donate a percentage of its income to charity? Do they feed the hungry? NO! Intuit exists to make its CEO, stockholders and employee's money.
Finally, another thing that
In conclusion, leave IBM alone until they try to patent the letter "A" or UNIX.
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not.
No small (or even large) concern can realistically claim to have not infringed a patent for anything modern and nominally (or more) complex.
That to me is the biggest flaw to the system.
The reason some companies keep their R&D confidential is because they've often independantly invented something that another company has already patented. They're hoping that, if the details of their implementation can be kept secret, large patent holders won't get the idea to sue them.
IBM doesn't file this many patents because they're such great innovators, but so that no other company would even dream of filing a patent suit against them. With the number if IBM patents, it's probably impossible to touch a computer without infringing on a dozen of them. We're lucky that their patent strategy is merely defensive.
Yesterday I noticed that a simple plastic bag had been patented. I was looking at the bag to see find it's recycling logo, and there it was. Some patent number. Now, this wasn't a fancy ziplock or super-ultra freezer bag with teflon air foils or anything. This was your regular grocery store plastic bag. Not even one with holes for handles. Just a plastic bag.
See this interesting writeup on the "everything has been invented" myth.
Registered to registerfly.com?
Well, anyways, if that whois stuff eventually traces back to the person (I don't see it here but maybe it does on some site) then that's not cool.
On this note, sorta, I wonder why slashdot editors don't link the user's name to their slashdot URL (http://slashdot.org/~user) ?
Who cares where it links? One - The item was newsworthy and pretty well summarized in Slashdot submission, I didnt even click on the FA to read it. Two - No other news agency is reporting it, so even if you wanted to direct the readers to News.com or Wired or Register, you couldn't do it.
Jimmy Carter, 39th president. 1977-1981
3 9. html
http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/jc
Yes. Reagan was elected in Nov'80. You don't start the instant you are elected.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Many of the companies listed (IBM, etc.) actually DO innovate, and use the patent system the way it was intended. IBM rarely tries to sue infringers of their patents out of existence - They (and MOST other companies) are smart enough to know that it's better to negotiate a reasonable licensing agreement.
Unfortunately, it's the abusers that open up immediately with a lawsuit that give the system a bad name.
A family member of mine worked for Lucent's intellectual property division. For them, it was considered to be a last resort to take a patent assertion to court. 99% of the time there was a behind-the-scenes licensing (often cross-licensing - "I let you use my patents, you let me use yours") agreements.
Lucent has clearly gone downhill over the years. In the past, they most likely would have been on that list thanks to Bell Labs. Lucent/AT&T used to spend a LOT of money on R&D, including very forward-thinking basic research. Those expenditures brought us things like the transistor (which is generally considered to be an IP licensing success story - The transistor was licensed out VERY reasonably.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Have you ever studied a software patent to see what knowledge was revealed or "made patent" by the patent?
That was the original intent of the patent system, or at least the ostensible original intent. (I've gotten cynical about politics.) But the USPTO no longer adheres to that standard.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Now tell me again that patents are in place to protect the "little guy" from the big corporations.