I want to wrap up my thread on patents with a link to Don Dodge's blog, who posits that "Patents become poker chips in a high stakes game of legal lunacy."

Also:

"Patent portfolios are the best defense against patentinfringement lawsuits. Many times there are overlapping patents or verysimilar patents on any technology. When a big company is sued the firstthing they do is look at their own patent portfolio for a similarpatent so they can counter sue. This usually leads to a reasonable outof court settlement."

It kind of makes sense, and explains Microsoft's recent "Emotiflag" patent application, and an even more recent "RSS" patent application.