In my experience, settle early, settle often keeps your small business on track. While settling seemed wrong to me on principle (the patent was absurd), the cos

In my experience, settle early, settle often keeps your small business on track. While settling seemed wrong to me on principle (the patent was absurd), the cost of fighting far exceeded what my company could afford. I got on the phone with our corporate outside council and the plaintiff to explore our options. Their first question was "Are you a $100 or $200 million dollar per year company?" Uh, yeah, we think you have the wrong idea... In the end we settled for $50K, the equivalent of about two months legal fees to fight the suit. In the end it was the right decision as we bought certainty. Even ten years later this settlement bugs me, but it was the right thing to do.