Look at the current patent trends. The first company to paten an idea that having people interact via avatars interact in an online world managed by a server was not the first company to come up with the idea. However they are now suing every MMORPG on the market because any game in which users chat with eachother using avatars violate the patent.

Apple is doing such things as well patenting things like "a 3d desktop" they don't have to do much just describe a rough idea of one.

OOOOOO and my favorite is the company who is suing Apple, MS, Palm, Google due to their exclusive patent on operating systems. I am sure they invented OSes it just a few years ago.