My favorite bit from my employer’s counterclaim in the NetApp case:

COMPLAINT PARAGRAPH 3:

NetApp is a pioneer in the design of data storage systems marketed throughout the United States and abroad and continues to innovate new advances in data storage technology. NetApp’s patents cover a host of advanced features found in NetApp’s award-winning Data ONTAP storage operating system and Write Anywhere File Layout (WAFL) filesystem. These include fundamental developments in filesystems, data consistency, data integrity, storage management, write allocation, read-only data images (SnapshotsTM), writeable clones, copy-on-write, RAID arrays and assimilation, and file system image transfer. NetApp’s patented features are demanded by customers the world over because they greatly enhance the performance, reliability and ease of use of data storage systems.

ANSWER TO COMPLAINT PARAGRAPH 3:

Sun denies the allegations of the first, third and fourth sentences of paragraph 3 of the Complaint.

I’m not sure we come off completely smelling like roses in this suit, either, but if we’re going to have a patent lawsuit, this is the right thing to do with the gains:

I am committing that Sun will donate half of those proceeds to the leading institutions promoting free software and patent reform (in specific, The Software Freedom Law Center and the Peer to Patent initiative), and to the legal defense of free software innovators. We will continue to fund the aggressive reexamination of spurious patents used against the community (which we’ve been doing behind the scenes on behalf of several open source innovators). Whatever’s left over will fuel a venture fund fostering innovation in the free software community.

Some reading on the subject:

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