

Twitter's no-lawsuit pledge: "We will not join the patent wars" - nsns
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/04/twitters-no-lawsuit-pledge-we-will-not-join-the-patent-wars.ars

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ChuckMcM
As with most things, easy to say, hard to do.

Someone comes along and sues you for patent infringement, you have two
choices; pay them off or pay lawyers.

Either way is expensive, and expensive can kill you. Now it would be doubtful
they would be willing to simply disband as an entity in the presence of a
lawsuit, so minimizing the expense means having a defense, and that generally
means building an arsenal of patents.

Then when you are running out of cash, and maybe looking at death by a
thousand cuts, those patents stop looking like defense and start looking like
a way to save the company. Voila, you've just become an active combatant in
the patent wars of the 21st century.

