These are not simple questions. If you are a journalist, follow the money. I personally suspect that the offensive use of patents, both by "trolls" such as Lods

These are not simple questions. If you are a journalist, follow the money. I personally suspect that the offensive use of patents, both by "trolls" such as Lodsys and large players such as Microsoft, has stepped on enough toes to cause certain vested interests to start a broad-spectrum fight against other vested interests. One usual result of those kinds of fights is manipulation of the public sphere, also known as "press relations". http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html