They have every right to protect anything they invent as does anyone else. There should however be changes made in the law that prevent them stealing other people's work and claiming it as their own.

IPR is one of the best things there is for getting investment so we have a situation where everyone and his mother patents things that are just common sense, the rules that applied to patents in the past are mostly ignored if you are a big company and if you are not then you can't afford to patent and even if you did you cannot afford to defend.

"First to file" is another of those American inventions that needs putting right up the nether bits of the guys that thought about it.

Patents were laid down in order that the small person did not lose out to the big people but the invention was not kept secret thus allowing other people to develop the ideas, theoretically excellent but sadly marred by the parasites in the legal business.

Keep the patents, shoot the lawyers and all would be good.