"Mutually assured destruction" in patent litigation viewed as a porcupine fight

Palm chief Ed Colligan on a possible fight between Apple and Palm over the Pre and patents:

It's like two little porcupines going around, and you don't want to touch each other because you might get stung. You peacefully coexist and everything's OK and you keep working together. We're very respectful about people's intellectual property, we believe we're huge innovators and have been for a lot of years and that this product has an enormous number of innovations in it. If something does happen there, we do have the portfolio, we think to defend ourselves and to be successful doing that. But nothing's happened to date, so we're really just focused on getting the product out the door."

See also

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2006/09/dr-strangelove-still-cause-for-worry.html

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/02/patenthawk-smokes-lemley.html

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2005/06/techcentral-on-patent-reform.html