"The quality of a technology company’s patents, rather than volume, is the most important issue "

From the Financial Times article titled Google catches up in technology patent wars :




Patent experts warn that the quality of a technology company’s patents, rather than volume, is the most important issue affecting its legal defences. Apple has won the upper hand in its US legal battles against Samsung despite having a far smaller patent portfolio.

However, the sheer quantity of patent holdings also helps deter attack and has led to an intellectual property arms race.
“A large patent portfolio deters competitors from filing suit in the same way that an arsenal of nuclear weapons deters war,” Mr Love said. “It implies that any attack will be met with an equally destructive counterattack.”




Of the first point, one notes that litigations now tend to focus on a few patents and a few claims of those patents.

Of the second point, the "nuclear" analogy has been around for a long time. For example

from 2006:
Dr. Strangelove: still cause for worry

from 2007:
Microsoft says FOSS infringes 235 patents, up from 228 in 2004 , which included the text

** Fortune brings up the now over-used mutually assured destruction (MAD) symbolism:

It's a cold war, and what keeps the peace is the threat of mutually assured destruction: patent Armageddon - an unending series of suits and countersuits that would hobble the industry and its customers. IPBiz wonders if they have any original writers at Fortune? **

from 2009:
"Mutually assured destruction" in patent litigation viewed as a porcupine fight

Any original writers at the Financial Times?