What started out as a way to protect inventors before they took their inventions public has turned into what bNet’s Erik Sherman is calling a second tech bubble: a tech patent bubble. In the last year, alone, the sheer number of patent cases making their way through both U.S. and international courts has given rise what might become a patent war among tech giants such as Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, HTC, and a host of others.

At stake is the right to do business, or even prevent the competition from operating in the same space.

Beneath all of this, argues Sherman are greed and fear as companies look to protect their competitive space. He says that the current wave of both patent purchases and lawsuits is motivated by the fact that companies “know the long-term cost of not having protection…is far greater than the $12.5 billion a Google (GOOG) might pay for Motorola Mobility (MMI).”

Read more at bNet ^[1].