"Being Pro-Business today may mean being Anti-Patent: Business interests in the majority of fields do not enforce their patents to obtain or maintain an exclusive patent right; many have a generally negative view of the patent system. (The minority view is found in the pharmaceutical, chemical, biotech and other emerging technologies and amongst small businesses and universities where a patent-based exclusive position is essential to development and exploitation of new technology.)

Many businesses that do not seek an exclusive patent-based position pay a lot of money to create a patent thicket principally for cross-licensing settlements with other manufacturers who would otherwise sue them for infringement. Yet, these patent thickets provide no protection against non-manufacturing patentees who have everything to gain from an infringement litigation and nothing to lose. "

Source: Hal Wegner, Partner, Foley and Lardner, a prominent patent attorney, as a guest opinion in the blog of Dennis Crouch, another prominent patent attorney, 28 January 2007.

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