Bogus Patent == Viable business plan (Score 1)

Once you get your hands on a ridiculously general patent, you can make real money - even if you can't really defend the thing in court.

Here's how it works: once you've patented something like e-commerce, you go to a significant hardware vendor (say, IBM) and offer blanket coverage to all their customers for, say, $100,000. Don't choose Sun, 'cause they're too popular.

IBM gets a selling point (buy our hardware, and you won't have to deal with this nuisance lawsuit), and the patent holder gets a warchest. Now he can go demand a large but affordable license fee from any number of small-to-medium sites. Forget Amazon - they're too big, and once you've lost a lawsuit, the precedent is against you.

Everyone you can bully into paying makes you stronger, and makes your argument better.

Man, what a scam. The funny part is that this actually happened a few years ago, here in the US (or at least this was my interpretation of it). The company, whose name escapes me, got another patent on e-commerce (effectively), signed IBM, and went after small fish.