Even if the patent is bad, it still has value if you can get someone to pay you to go away. |
He was kicking their butts. He had this huge litigation hammer hanging over their head. They knew he would chew them up and spit them out if they didn't ante up. |
In fact, there is a 60% chance that one or more of the patents will be reaffirmed. |
That increased the cost of re-examination by at least an order of magnitude. |
The patent system is a crucial part of what made America great. The companies who are complaining about the system are bad players, crooks who took great liberties with others' inventions. What they are really complaining about is being held accountable for their disreputable conduct. |
Those companies get sued for their disreputable conduct, lose in a court of law on the merits of a case, and then try to paint their victims as the abusers. Their conduct is, to put it mildly, egregious, and includes abusing the process of law to bankrupt the people whose property they steal ... and using political influence to try and sway the courts and to definitely sway the patent office. |