The only way you can enforce a patent is by having armed law enforcement do so (as they did in this case), or relying on the perception that armed law enforcement <i>could</i> do so.<p>That said, this argument would essentially hold that to live in civilized society (at least, as we understand civilization), to take advantage of tax-funded things like roads, to make use of government-enforced currencies, etc. is also violence. Which might be technically true, but is not useful, and certainly not useful for the goal of getting the <i>rest</i> of the world to be less violent; I know very few people whose brand of non-violence does not involve attempting to stop other people&#x27;s violence. Indeed, a serious application of this argument would require one not to use the Internet, which was government-funded (i.e., funded by tax dollars, i.e., funded by money taken at implicit threat-of-gunpoint from citizens) out of military budgets (violence incarnate) and is still a bit government-run, and it would certainly require one not to use Hacker News, given how much Y Combinator firmly requires a strong conception of private property.<p>So I think our pal Sonic the Hedgehog&#x27;s famous quote applies, although the context is slightly different: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;wi1QIgG.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;wi1QIgG.jpg</a>