The patent system was set up to be taken advantage of in this exact way. Well, maybe not this exact way. It was certainly never intended to have the consequen

The patent system was set up to be taken advantage of in this exact way. Well, maybe not this exact way. It was certainly never intended to have the consequences Bill Gates foresaw in his leaked 1991 memo: "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. [...] The solution to this is patent exchanges with large companies and patenting as much as we can." http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070313-analysis-microsofts-software-patent-flip-flop.html http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070313-analysis-micro...