Here's what's happened at the company I used to work at and what happens at many other companies:
1) IBM comes and says hey you're violating these 10 patents. Pay up.
2) Targeted company goes, hey we're not. Company spends X amount of money and tons of time to prove that they're not violating the patents.
3) IBM goes, oh ok, yeah you're right. So you're not violating those 10 patents. Well, here's another 10 we think you're violating. Now...we can do this forever or you can just pay us $1M/year and have us go away.
4) Targeted company does cost-benefit analysis of legal fees to continue to fight IBM indefinitely or they can pay this "license" fee. Company decides pays $1M to "license" IBM patents
oh and postscript, Targeted company wises up and decides to build up its own IP portfolio as a defensive measure and fills the patent system with even more useless patents.
It's a tricky question to ensure "fair" treatment of patent settlements.
Clearly patent trolls with silly patents such as the automatic trim()-on-insert should be banished. In fact, I can't think of ever reading about any CS patent that would have actually been useful and truly an idea worth the grant.
On the other hand, were there more burden of proof placed on the inventor's side, this would discriminate small inventors in traditional patentable fields (like mechanical or engineering constructions). Big companies could just "steal" their ideas and count on them being unable to enforce the patent.
I think the way of the future would be just to give up on the illusion of "intellectual 'property'". Patents don't seem to be incentive when it comes to inventing; instead they seem to incentivise commercialisation. However, all smart people I know would invent new things regardless of any monetary reward or lack thereof.
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/21509.wss
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-5527642.html
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DE3DF133CF...
http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/06/ibm-tries-to-stop-asus-im...
And that was just from a 2 minute Google search.
Notice settlements are called "cross licensing" but only have money going in one direction - towards IBM.
Not to mention, just like a real arms race... It's not the government officials who are really in danger, it's all of the common people, or in this case, programmers.
Why would I need to replace trim? Trim existed before the filing date of the application for patent. The patent does not cover trim. Why would one think that the patent does cover trim?
According to the text of the patent any method that removes leading or trailing space would fall under protection of this patent.
No, it wouldn't. The 2. Description of Related Art section states:
Currently, TRIM functions, available in SQL, are used to remove leading and/or trailing space characters from data being presented to a user.
Therefore, merely any method that removes leading or trailing space cannot be what is being claimed in the patent.
in big companies, patents are sort-of like trading cards. they're are used defensively. so, if oracle or someone else came after ibm for a database-related patent, IBM could make a patent trade to prevent expensive action from being taken.
it's the corporate equivalent of a superpowers' arms race. they're designed to be a deterrent and aren't (often) acquired for first strike purposes.