BT Sues Google for Patent Infringements (Wired)

Well, there is no fixed pattern to this but typically the party warms up with accusations and, as you say, counter accusations. Some times this goes to the press but while hard figures are hard to find my impression is that in the majority of cases the whole thing is kept low key. After rain comes the sun and after war one would hope for peace so there is no point in engaging in bridge burnings. There is a cultural aspect here too, some fields are a bit like the wild west while others are operating by gentlemen's agreements where you open by almost apologising for inconveniencing the infringing party with your patent while they in turn apologise for the mistake and it is all sorted out in a day or two.

In most cases you end up with claim construction: patent claims are broken down into features and you have to show where you find all features of at least one claim. The other party argues how this is all a mistake (mostly your mistake, supposedly) and it goes back and forth a few times. There will be lots of discussions and hopefully it will be solved at management levels. If not it goes to court, which is expensive for all involved and preferably to be avoided. Often you get an out of court settlement, the details of which trend to be confidential.

While there are examples of the opposite, innovations tend to be found in small companies so it is advantageous for the big company to get a proper license and possibly exclusivity for the invention and nurture a more productive relationship. The process itself is fairly similar for small and for large companies.

I could write a lot more about it but it is getting big already.

> Many software patents that are granted can only be charitably described as silly, but a patent is a patent.

Arthur Pedrick filed some bizarre applications but in the field of software I have not seen any silly patents myself. Mostly these are fare narrower than most people realise, protecting some very specific applications that can be avoided by most people. For instance all the first GSM mobile phone related patents have expired and you could use that technology. You could get by but you would miss out on improvements relating to reception, sound quality, battery lifetime and more

> (like having a text editor window and a calculator window open on the same screen at the same time, a revolutionary and unobvious invention if there ever was one, which AFAIR used to be patented by IBM)

Well, if it is in the US you get the frequent confusion with design patents (protecting visual appearances of the calculator) with utility patent (protecting how it works). If we are talking about a utility patent I would expect it protected how they were able to have both programs on the screen, not just the fact that both could be shown.