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If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today... A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose.

--Bill Gates, Microsoft CEO, 1991

Now that they be giants?

Protection for software patents and other intellectual property is essential to maintaining the incentives that encourage and underwrite technological breakthroughs. In every industry, patents provide the legal foundation for innovation. The ensuing legal disputes may be messy, but protection is no less necessary, even so.

--Brad Smith, Microsoft general counsel, 2007

So where would Billy-G be today if (for example) IBM owned it all?