Sorry about that, I can now see how I miscommunicated. I was lazily using empire to allude to - 'an economic entity with a well defined identity and well define

Sorry about that, I can now see how I miscommunicated. I was lazily using empire to allude to - 'an economic entity with a well defined identity and well defined borders'. Let me take an example to clarify this situation - Lets assume a hypothetical situation where Nokia has reached its limits of what it thinks a Phone could be it has stopped doing fundamental innovation ie it has a well defined empire with a well defined cost structure and a well defined revenue model. In such a situation it is in Nokia's self interest to use their immense patent portfolio to create a moat around their business to keep upstarts like Apple / Google away. On the other hand lets consider another hypothetical situation where Nokia were innovating and trying to reimagine what a phone could be. Perhaps they were doing interesting things in software to displace desktops and make the phone the central location of the users global state. In this case they would be encroaching onto areas where other entities (like Microsoft, Google) might hold significant patents. In this case it would be in Nokia's self interest to be the anti patent candidate. I have often found that when I use more words to clarify a miscommunication I often end up causing more damage. I hope that is not the case here.