Patent wars are far from over

It seems that patent wars are far from over. Companies pay several millions or even billions in order to purchase patents for their arsenal. Microsoft will pay $1.056 billion to AOL for more than 800 of its patents (and patent applications). The transaction will most probably completed by the end of 2011. Microsoft wants to enhance its patent portfolio and be prepared for patent lawsuits. Nowadays, companies are as strong as their patent arsenal and they try to be on top not by innovating and creating better products but by suing their opponents. Facebook recently bought patents from IBM to protect itself from Yahoo! and sue them back. IBM has the greatest patent arsenal but we don’t see them in patent lawsuits. On the other hand we are tired to see Apple, Microsoft, Google and Samsung suing each other. While large companies upgrading their patent arsenal, patent law will make it impossible for new companies to create rival products. There are so many patents and some of them are very generic which makes it almost impossible to create a new product without at least one patent infringement (even without knowing it).