Tech companies have been using patents law to launch all out warfare against one another in recent years, with many of the big players spending billions on these legal battles over the rights to pioneering ideas and inventions related to new mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

The US Court of Appeals is the exclusive venue for patent lawsuit appeals, but over the years it has developed a reputation for coming to decisions upholding many patents that are so broad it becomes difficult to tell what they actually cover. The 1990s was a big time for software patent approvals, and unlike with many other inventions these required only general descriptions rather than code or other specifics to show exactly how they worked. Similarly, these loose standards were also used in the patent approval process for certain business methods and technologies.

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