&gt; <i>It is a massive negative-sum (to the non-lawyer participants)</i><p>To be fair, in this case Ericsson is a practicing entity and they probably have a salaried legal staff, so your specific criticisms don&#x27;t really apply here.<p>More just general patent criticisms: ease of acquisition, non-specificity, valuation on market and legal leverage instead of marginal value, (if any of the above patents are software patents) software patents in general, etc