"By April 1988, when Gould's use patent was approved, optically pumped amplifier patents covered 80% of the lasers made in the United States. The market for lasers had ballooned to more than $500 million per year. Suddenly, Gould was a multimillionaire."
http://electronicdesign.com/article/components/gordon-gould-...
That hasn't worked for around 20 years - the "if issued term" clock starts ticking the day that you apply.
This is a huge problem for drug companies because their applications take a long time to issue.
(Don't construe this as a defence of it though.)
The legal system in the US is basically a self-feeding machine that produces crap you have to pay for.
