The value of patents (Score 2, Insightful)

These days, lots of companies file patents with no intention of ever making any money out of them.

For startups, it's always nice to show an impressive patent list to investors. Usually easier to get more funding.

Large companies encourage engineers to file patents (they sometimes get a small bonus, etc.) and again almost never try to make any money of them.

These are the reasons we see many less-than-amazing patents filed these days. It *looks* good.

There are some obvious counter-examples but these are usually more sophisticated patents.