Skype Suit

So here we go again. Yet another patent infringement case launching with Net2Phone, recently acquired by mega-corp IDT pursuing the Skype billions (and scarcely hidden marketing value - good or bad is for your to decide) claiming a computer-to-computer telephone patent is violated by the free Skype VoIP service. I have long been a fierce opponent of patent infringement cases in their current guise as most appear to be less succesful (or non-succesful) companies going after their betters as a way to reclaim their lost marketshare (share lost mainly due poorer-than-thou performance). To watch a monolith like IDT use the Net2Phone vehicle and try to curb the service that arguably put VoIP into the homes of millions of people years before anyone else would have .. just seems morally unjustifiable - makes me wonder how Howard Jones explains this one to the readers of his popular book on morally correct business management. They cannot reap much in terms of rewards as Skype is not charging money for their basic service - so going after eBay - for the pure purpose of milking the cow - leaves me with a decidedly bad taste and a sworn statement never to use an IDT product (since I'm not Hispanic I probably wouldn't have anyway - but you get my drift).
Looking back in telecoms and mobile services over the past 5-8 years it does strike one that the number of patent suits seem to have escalated significantly. Can anyone explain why this wasn't the case back in the dotcom boom? In the good ole days of irrational exuberance you had pets.com .. petfood.com .. food4pets.com .. etc. Noone was suing - everybody was busy trying to execute on their (sometimes questionable) business models. After having watched RIM fork over $612m, BCGi pay $128m and countless other well-performing companies have to yellowmail (I am to patent this term; coined to describe the exstautionary methods that patent-lawyers (yellow bxxxxrds) use to squeeze their go-away money from healthy businesses - i will wait from a friendly call from the chap who came up with greenmail - we'll see how that plays out). I am not alone in this call to arms. Many journalists have over the past 12-18 months been raising an increasingly consistent alarm. The US Patent office will have to be refreshed. And they will have to review their prior art and general patent grants at a much deeper level to curb this business pratice.
Your comments are welcomed as always.