Complicating the balance of intellectual property rights and the rights of the public are the various manipulations of intellectual property rights or intentional ignorance of them.  Corporations use patent laws to control the market in other ways.  One example occurred  when the Eastman Kodak Company discovered that there was a profit to be made in repairing their equipment.  In June of 1996 the Supreme Court ruled in Eastman Kodak v. Image Technical Services that the Eastman Kodak Company must sell replacement parts for their copiers to independent repairers.  The company attempted to invoke patent protection, but the court ruled that it was an example of monopolizing repair service.  Frivolous patents are also a problem.  These patents are filed in other countries solely to prevent local manufacturers from producing it.  Freelance journalist P. Sainath cites a study in "Patent Folly: Another Point of View that indicated that only .03 percent of the some 2,534 patents for pharmaceuticals in the country of Columbia were used for their intention--protection.   These are greed driven patents; not about protecting ideas but about protecting the market.  Nathan Myhrvold Microsoft's first chief technology officer explained that in the highly competitive computer industry, "Many of the largest tech companies have a standing policy that engineers are not allowed to read patents or check whether their work infringes."  It's much simpler for them to deal with the consequences of intellectual property infringement later.  This puts the onus on patent holders to discover the infringement and proceed with costly litigation.  "Patents are now being used to privatize knowledge and resources that would otherwise be available to the public or to the scientific community," states P. Sainath. 

Intellectual property protection creates other advantages to corporations over individuals. The end of the last century and the beginning of this has seen a trend of patent applications (submitted by "patent trolls") that have been successful in patenting commonly used items (e.g. the hyperlink and pop-up window) in hopes of collecting licensing fees from users.   Average people with limited resources may find themselves defending use of that which they consider public domain against copyright infringement suits presented by these corporations with unlimited resources.  Additionally, corporations with legions of lawyers focused on obtaining and protecting patents are able to preempt smaller companies and individuals in obtaining a patent and are better able to defend their patents.  Consider Richard Lang, co-founder of a small software company called Burst.com.  In the late 1990s his small company designed software and partnered with Microsoft.  For a short time the software (designed as a plug-in to Microsoft's Windows Media Player) was marketed; however, shortly thereafter, Microsoft reneged on their promise and released a version of media player that was not compatible with the software.  In a few short months Lang's company went from over one hundred employees to a handful.   One year later Microsoft released a video delivery system utilizing Burst's patented information.  Lang sued and four years later settled with Microsoft for $60 million licensing fee.  Ironically, Lang now heads a company that many call a patent troll.  Many companies have also used patents to suppress information.  For example, General Electric delayed the introduction of fluorescent lights to the consumer for fear that it would compete with their incandescent light market states Brian Martin, a professor researching the dynamics of power at the University of Wollongong in Australia.