When Patents Attack

My computer software ** engineer husband sent me a link to a podcast by This America Life by WBEZ: When Patents Attack that gives a lot of information about why people who work with software think patents harm, rather than help, technology.  Nowadays companies who don't make products sue companies who do for patent infringement.  And companies that don't want to get sued have to come up with their own patent portfolio, so if they do get sued, they can counter sue and hopefully come up with a mutually acceptable settlement that lets both companies use each others patents.

This is not what patents are for and it wasn't always like this.  It occurred to me that with all the accurate predictions of the future made by science fiction I don't know a SF book that directly mentions the breakdown of the patent process so that technological development stalls.  If you know one, please mention the name and, if possible, author, in the comments.

And if you want to learn more about the problems with patents, the podcast is quite interesting.

** Apparently there's a difference between a computer engineer and a software engineer, so while he works with software, his degree is in computer engineering.  Sorry for the confusion.