[jlg23]

> defensive patents are really common these day

I had a discussion about this with an IBM representative 15 years ago at a symposium at Heinrich-Boell-Stiftung in Berlin: IBM's point was that one can always join their patent-pool (of defensive patents) which means you give them a free license to use your patents and you are free to use their "defensive" patents. This is completely broken: You never know which patents become relevant and any new player already lost because one just cannot keep up with a company that can extort a free license from you and then dump a few (hundred) million into development based on that.