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I like James Lancaster's advice on patents. If you have ideas worth patenting, and less than about a billion dollars, publish everything until someone pays you to shut up. It really is a rich man's game. I even know one patent lawyer who blew a 4mil nest egg trying to use a patent he took out himself. I'm usually just cagey enough that if a patent lawyer wants to join as a partner and work on spec, he'll have something new to work with.
Companies hate independent patents even more than unions, and budget ten times as much to avoid royalties instead of paying up, if they can't just do something else and wait you out. One classic was a new plastic injection-molding machine invented in Czechoslovakia, and backed by all the state attorneys who thought they had an ironclad international patent. The Italians just bolted the plunger to the floor, put the mold on rails, and had their own version.
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