Intellectual property (and more particularly patents), having escaped from being a virtual backwater of the law in the early 1990s, is fast approaching a "tipping point" of acceptance as a natural and useful component in the arsenal of every technology company. As of now, contemporary commercial orthodoxy virtually demands that if your company is a technology company, it should have a cogent IP function (or, at the very least, an IP strategy) that complements and augments the wider company strategy. In 2010, having a technology company and no IP strategy would be incongruous in the extreme. The question thus presents itself: which companies are "technology" companies?