[retSava]

Patents are granted, then if challenged, can be invalidated in court. It should be the other way around, they shouldn't be granted in the first case.

Not all can handle being taken to court for a claimed patent infringement of a crappy patent. It's expensive, time-consuming, and difficult. Did I mention wasteful?

[mattrp]

I’m not trying to be argumentative and someone who is a lawyer can correct me here but generally speaking a company like ibm is only going to seek licensing from a party where the commercial impact is sufficient to merit the use of their resources to secure a licensing deal. Even in the case of Airbnb, it’s clear in the article ibm is suing only after attempting to exhaust other remedies. Again, I don’t think it’s necessarily bullet proof legal policy to advise companies to fly under the radar but de facto I don’t think ibm is spending a lot of time chasing companies who can’t afford a legal defense.