[styfle]

I was working for a large hardware company (I'm not going to name names) that typically files for hardware/firmware patents. There was a push for everyone to file more patents, even from the software teams.

I was working on an app that had graph-like data so we decided to use a graph database...nothing super innovative. My coworker, who apparently had a couple patents, said that we could probably patent this algorithm. I looked at him and said, how can you patent traversing nodes and vertices... that's graph theory 101?!

Big companies try to patent everything because its a metric they can use to show how amazing they are, and acts as blackmail (or cold war). If you sue me, I'll sue you.