It costs a company $20-50k to successfully prosecute a patent. Filing alone costs $15k or so by the time the various filing bonuses are paid. (I don't know Sun's numbers, but many companies pay $3-5k to inventors on filing and a comparable amount on issue.)
Filing joke patents aren't responsible for Sun's financial woes, but if you're throwing away that kind of money on "humor".... (And yes, huge meetings also waste large amounts of money.)
As it was done in response to a crippling patent law suit chances are the was minimal or no filing bonus at all, it was probably pitched as "file or Sun dies."
Filing joke patents aren't responsible for Sun's financial woes, but if you're throwing away that kind of money on "humor".... (And yes, huge meetings also waste large amounts of money.)