Patents only help the big guys. The *REALLY* big guys. It sounds like patents are used a bit like nuclear weapons stock. If you're a company releasing product with a massive portfolio of patents, and some other company wants to take you down with a patent of *theirs*, you can probably counter-patent claim some obscure feature of some other product the other company has. So it's mutual trust - don't bother me, I won't bother you.
Without a patent portfolio, it's probably hard to eg. start selling laptops out of the blue, you'd be an easy target for the big guys (since they know there is nothing you can do).
- Paul
