Z:gnu-www-ja-danger-of-software-patents--74647f-IBM wrote an article in its ho/en

IBM wrote an article in its house magazine, Think magazine&mdash;I think it's issue 5, 1990&mdash;about the benefit IBM got from its almost 9,000 US patents at the time (now it's up to 45,000 or more). They said that one of the benefits was that they collected money, but the main benefit, which they said was perhaps an order of magnitude greater, was &ldquo;getting access to the patents of others,&rdquo; namely cross-licensing.