From the abstract of Words Matter: Economics & A Literal Reading of Mars, American Seating, and Monsanto-Ralph by David Blackburn and Phillip A. Beutel of NERA Economic Consulting:

Because of their sometimes straightforward and plain language, these cases threaten to create potholes along the road to rational and appropriate damage awards.

At a guess that means "less money than we'd like to squeeze out of people that work for a living."

Two possibilities:
1. It's satire.
2. Two words: patent fundamentalism.

Wow. Just wow.

Hey! Why does this comment system put my email address in a mailto link? I don't want that to get picked up by spambots!

This site's invitation for a commenter to enter an e-mail address that is subsequently published is a netiquette deficiency that has been pointed out before.

Unfortunately, we're still waiting for a remedy. I've suggested a URL might be better, but no joy as yet... :-/

If you think not putting your email on the web will protect you from spam, dream on. I've changed it to clearly mark the email as optional and given it a default with a fake email address nobody@nowhere.com.

David, I suggest you use '@example.com' rather than '@nowhere.com' given the former is reserved as a void domain, whereas the latter actually belongs to someone.

Even then, it would be nice if you could let people choose what link text they enter, e.g. either mailto: or http:

Change the box from "Email" to "Link" this box text then gets used as the 'href' argument.

<a href="mailto:nobody@example.com">Fred Bloggs</a>

or

<a href="http://nobody.example.com">Fred Bloggs</a>

You can decide which default to use, either blank, or 'mailto:nobody@example.com'.

Pretty much no-one chooses to e-mail someone based on a comment, but plenty of people are interested in checking out a comment author's site for further details (including contact info if they're truly inclined).