] When faced with two choices -- selling a company's
] patents as part of its overall assets or selling the
] patents alone -- the court (and the market) chose the
] latter. This means that in the eyes of the legal system
] and the marketplace, the Commerce One patents were more
] valuable to independent licensing firms as legal threats
] than they were to an actual company that makes a Web
] services product.
]
] This is not what the patent system was intended to
] promote. The idea behind patents is that inventors and
] manufacturers of new products should have some protection
] against free riders in the marketplace that would
] otherwise copy their innovations. If competitors are able
] to simply copy the innovations of those first to market,
] few will have incentives to release their products to the
] public. In this instance, however, we see the opposite
] result.

Who needs patents as marketplace protections when they are more effectively used as marketplace weapons?