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 stand-still''' today. The solution . . . is '''patent exchanges''' . . . and '''patenting as much as we can'''. . . . A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high: '''Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors'''.


Bill Gates -- In Fred Warshofsky, The Patent Wars 170-71 (NY: Wiley 1994).