Patent litigation is difficult, expensive, and risky. Patent litigation can take years, or even decades, and changing and inconsistent court decisions are notorious.

Anti-patent publicity orchestrated by patent infringers as an intentional strategy has led to a number of court decisions weakening patent protection in the U.S. Decisions such as ones creating a more flexible standard for finding a patent as “obvious,” allowing weaker notices of patents to trigger lawsuits before a patentee is ready, reducing the availability of injunctions against patent infringement, and construing patent claims more narrowly have taken their toll in actual court cases, to the detriment of real inventors.