This reminds me of a story I read in the NPR not so long ago,
about companies in America that exit solely to buy up software patents to sue other companies.
This has led to the most of the big companies buying up software patent libraries,
with the idea being that if you have a big enough patent library, other companies will not sue you as you can look through your library and find something they may be using that you have a patent for and then sue them in turn.
As patents exist for nearly all types of software, from a pop up that tells you need to update something, to code that tells you you have a new e-mail, it is relatively easy for a company to start a law suit for patent misuse.
(I even saw a patent for the modification of bread via the application of heat, or making toast)
The side effect of this is that larger companies like IBM, Apple and Microsoft can afford long and lengthy legal battles that a smaller company could not.
It is entirely possible that as a result from this, we can expect to see smaller software companies going under and allot less developers in the US
