Comment by AnthonyMouse

> The total lithium battery patent licensing market is estimated at less than 600 million USD a year.

This is often because someone holds an important patent but either isn't licensing it to others because they're actually manufacturing it (implying they're holding back everyone else in the market), or they're asking too much and then almost everyone uses the existing technology instead of licensing the patent, again holding things back. As soon as the patent expires everyone starts using it.

> The pace of innovation is furious, and companies are treating patents more as a way to ensure MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) rather than as a tool to get income.

This is often even worse, because then you have a hundred companies with patents and as soon as one of them goes out of business the patents go to a troll who starts shaking everyone down because MAD doesn't apply to trolls who don't make anything. And then companies wary of being subjected to that will be avoiding doing anything under patent until the patents expire.

Companies in industries like this should probably start using some kind of patent GPL where you have to permanently license all your patents to everyone else who does the same, the purpose of which is to thwart trolls because everyone has to put their patents in while they're still in business or they'll be sued, and then the patents are already in by the time a failing company gets liquidated.