&gt;If you don&#x27;t know how to build a multi-billion dollar product without stealing prior work that isn&#x27;t yours, WHY should you be able to sledgehammer your way into lots of money by preventing somebody else from getting paid for what they did?<p>The assumption being, of course, that you actually stole prior work instead of coming up with the same idea.  From what I can tell, most of the time these patents cover obvious stuff.<p>A touch screen on a phone?  Who would have thought of that?  Everybody, actually.  Everybody.