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There certainly have been cases where alleged software patent violations result in lawsuits. There the lawyers get rich while very senior engineers cool their heels in court or give depositions in places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant.

I don't know how measurable this is but it is patently obvious it is preventing progress.

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Sorry, no time to do the legwork to see if this would work, but I wonder if this "wastage" could be crudely measured by taking some aggregate number of patent related lawsuits per year, multiplying by some factor to include those settled out of court, multipy again by a conservative mean cost of a patent action (attack, defense, commonwealth) == $wasted/year.

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