Another example of what to me seems like a "good" case for NPEs: Stanford's CCRMA invented a bunch of early synthesizer techniques, and licensed them to Yamaha,

Another example of what to me seems like a "good" case for NPEs: Stanford's CCRMA invented a bunch of early synthesizer techniques, and licensed them to Yamaha, who brought them to market. A reasonable division of labor: CCRMA is not well equipped to manufacture and market synthesizers to the general public, but Yamaha is and was interested in their research. In turn, the licensing revenue was fed back into more research in the field. Patents provided the legal mechanism for that all to happen. A focus on NPEs also doesn't get at the abuse perpetrated by practicing entities. For example, Intel uses its stable of patents (many of them quite questionable) to prevent startups from breaking into its markets: you can only go up against Intel if you're someone like IBM who has their own patent stable to form a credible MAD threat. The aggressive use of patents by practicing entities with strong market positions (in order to stifle competition) is imo at least as big a problem as NPEs are.