If anything, the tech world's massive patent battles teach us the wrong way to handle intellectual property disputes.
So who can teach us the right way? Disney, from the sounds of it.
A Quora user asked the team behind Disney's latest flick "Wreck-It Ralph" how it got the intellectual property licenses for all of the video game characters featured in the movie.
And it sounds like they just put in the effort and the face time to get what they wanted.
Director Rich Moore said he and producer Clark Spencer went to a meet-and-greet event with the video game companies, talked to everyone involved in person and kept them up to date every step of the way.
"So many of these gaming companies understood that we were going to do our best to take care of their characters and be collaborative with them," Moore wrote on Quora.
And that inclusive attitude paid off for the House of Mouse.
"As a result we got pretty much almost anything we wanted, because the companies started feeling the momentum and everybody pretty much said yes to us," producer and designer Alan Dang said of the movie team's teamwork with the video game companies.
Alternatively, Disney could have gone ahead and used characters that looked and acted like the video games companies' creations. But those video game companies probably would have turned around and sued Disney for trademark infringement.
So there is something to be said for trying good old-fashioned teamwork to avoid a court battle.
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