Interesting quote in the article: <i>&quot;“We invest about 30 billion kronor ($3.51 billion) a year in research and development and license our patents to the whole industry. We expect fair returns to be able to continue to invest,” Mr. Alfalahi said.&quot;</i><p>This is how you do parallel technology development these days. A large company invests billions in research and patents their ideas, if you want to use their ideas in your product you license their patents already knowing that the technology will work, saving you billions.<p>Without patents there is no way for Ericcson to recover their investment in research, so they just don&#x27;t do it, so you never get 4GLTE cellular signals you&#x27;re stuck in some form of Analog. Or you get no roaming at all because everyone has their own proprietary radio infrastructure.<p>I agree that there is a lot wrong with the patent system, I also recognize that there is tremendous value in being able to fund research in this way.