摘要：When a fellow attorney heard that we were going to be
focusing our practice exclusively on patent litigation, he joked
that he would probably be able to send some work our way
because he knows of a potential client whose idea of "research
and development" consists entirely of actively copying other
people's ideas. While all parties sued for patent infringement
may not be acting so egregiously, in today's world there is much
to litigate about. The United States Patent and Trademark
Office (PTO) receives more than 350,000 patent applications
and grants thousands of patents every year.2 The number of
lawsuits filed alleging patent infringement grows at a record
pace, with an estimated 2,807 cases filed in 2006, up from
1,212 in 1990.3
