Back to the futuresIsn't it funny how you can forget about something for months on end, and then a string of coincidental occurrences mean that you suddenly can't stop thinking about it? For instance, the time that I was given the task of collecting my son Sebastian from choir practice during his school days, and only the subsequent events of 'the pub closing' and 'narrowly avoiding a kitchen knife-wielding Mrs Clarke' reminded me of the fact. Moving swiftly on, just one week after I mentioned the whole TT futures industry patent situation, which I for one thought to be a thing of the past, and suddenly related news articles keep springing up. Surely it must be more than a coincidence that, within days of each other, I read about a guy in Chicago who wants to set up a futures market based on companies' patent portfolios and...