Does infringing patents pay?

To overcome a competitor´s monopoly on a product, companies are challenging patents and designing around them. This has resulted in a more than 50% increase in the number of patent-related lawsuits between 1980 and 1990, even though the increase in the number of patent issues was only 46% during the same period. Various strategies of responding to competitors´ technological innovations are described. Besides discussing recent examples of patent infringements by companies, reasons are presented for the increase in such infringements. The costs and benefits to the company that infringes on patents, and some of the policies that discourage patent infringements are discussed