The best solution, given these nukes are artificial, is to get rid of them. With real world nukes, you can't put the genie back into the bottle, but in this case you can remove the government distortion that is causing this arms race.
Having legal "nukes" can also be a good thing, even for David when they're going against Goliath. I was recently involved with a legal dispute with a large corporate landlord. I was able to line up enough potential illegal civil and criminal acts that I'm pretty sure their lawyers just decided it would cheaper to settle with me.
that's nice. doesn't really inform the decision on software "nukes" though, does it? it might be that regulation/'distortion' is appropriate in one case, but not the other...
In some ways, patents losely correlate with R&D spend. So when a new play enters a mature field, they'll lack patents and end up having to license patents from companies that did the hard R&D.
It's a way of allowing R&D externalities to be captured.
The system doesn't work all that well, but that is the intent.
I think these companies just don't get involved in nuclear confrontations of this kind - it's a costly buiseness; this is a game for the big suckers. You still might want to get a few patents of your own in order to prop up your own valuation. (If you want to be bought out by a bigger player)
These companies unwillingly get involved in nuclear confrontations of this kind as soon as one of their products ends up looking remotely like it could eat some of the big suckers' lunch.
