Z:gnu-www-ja-ough-interview--996d61-Patents are like land mines fo/en

Patents are like land mines for software developers. It doesn't surprise me that a product such as an Android phone is accused of violating a tremendous number of patents, because it's a complicated software system. Any such complicated software system is going to have thousands of ideas in it, and if 10% of these ideas are patented that means hundreds of those ideas are patented. So any large program is likely to run afoul of hundreds of patents, and a system that's a combination of many programs is likely to run afoul of thousands of patents or more.