The headline is intended to describe an almost-contradictory scenario. Companies are claiming that there are benefits in the current patent system, but as the following ought to prove, this isn't a zero-sum game.

Patent lawsuits have long been used as a competitive weapon in many industries. Telecom is now getting their fair share. Vonage suffered a series of patent lawsuits from competitors last year, and now Verizon is suing Cox Communications on similar grounds.

Who benefits from all this mess? Lawyers, of course. The customers receive worse products and programmers waste their time reviewing and reading instead of actually developing. If they are lucky, they can sleep well at night knowing that every large program intersects with a few others which have patents to protect algorithms.

Another interesting item is this one which asks whether the media properly informs people about the serious problems at hand.

It's been common knowledge that, generally, as a subject becomes more esoteric, the public relies more greatly on mainstream press coverage to formulate opinions. The recent media coverage of the U.S. patent system has caught the attention of scholars, practitioners and entrepreneurs, where commentators have increasingly referenced media coverage that casts the patent system in a negative light (e.g., "bad" patents, opportunistic litigation, etc.). While some suggest that the coverage accurately reflects fundamental systemic problems, others believe that some media accounts are inaccurate, or at least overstate problems in the system.

Thanks to Digital Majority for those links. ⬆