When I started practicing law over 30 years ago—as hard as it is for many people to believe now—patent litigation was not "the thing" it is today. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which is the court that hears all appeals in patent cases, was then only 4 years old. Patent "trolls," as such, did not yet exist, although "submarine" patents did (Lemelson's being the most well known). Some of the most famous patent owner friendly courts (e.g., the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas) had yet to emerge, and there were virtually no local patent rules. On the business side of the law, most firms in "Big Law" did not have a single patent attorney in the firm (and if they did, they had just one or two), and even those that did often did not handle patent cases. Thirty years later, this seems unthinkable.