[inetsee]

"It's very expensive."

What I don't understand is why more companies don't band together to share the cost of fighting against a patent troll. The article lists more than a dozen companies being sued by this patent troll. If they banded together their cost would be a fraction of the cost of a solo fight against a patent troll, while the patent troll would have to bear all the cost of proceeding with the suit.

It seems to me that if more companies did this, it would shift the balance of power away from the patent trolls, and make then think twice before proceeding with a lawsuit, especially if their patent is weak.

[orthecreedence]

It'd be very interesting if legal teams from different companies banded together to fight a common foe. I'm surprised this doesn't happen (or maybe it does and we don't hear about it?)

If I was a defendant along with 10 other companies in a case like this, you can bet I'd be calling them up to start a friendly dialog about sharing resources and discovery results (whether they were competitors or not).

I can imagine that for larger legal teams, like Microsoft probably has, they have very strict procedures dealing with this sort of suit, making collaboration with other teams difficult. I don't know anyone on MS' legal team, so this is speculation ;).