As if it weren’t hard enough for a legal department to protect its company’s patents, what do some of them meet on the bridge but trolls! Even if patent trolls attack only occasionally, they cause stress (See my post of Jan. 20, 2006 with some metrics.)
Another dollop of despair may be patents kept secret by the US Patent and Trademark Office. According to data published in Wired, Dec. 2005 at 72, new Government secrecy orders are imposed at the rate of about 120 to 130 patents every year. I suppose these patents cover military-related inventions. Not being a patent lawyer, I have no idea how the holder of a classified secret patent enforces it if there were an infringement. 007, Esq. anyone?