Or monkey see, monkey do - the huge companies might instead redouble their efforts to get their own patents. Years ago Microsoft got nailed by Stac for infringe

Or monkey see, monkey do - the huge companies might instead redouble their efforts to get their own patents. Years ago Microsoft got nailed by Stac for infringement of a patent on disk compression techniques (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_lawsuit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_laws...), which seems to have spurred Microsoft into applying for patents of its own.