I agree, to a point. This is the world we live in, and we all have to survive, preferably thrive.

Going along with wrongdoing, just because that's the way you make it in this world, is a reasonable strategy, sure. But when things are bad enough there is a time for ethical players to sacrifice for a greater purpose.

Each person, including board members and executives, is responsible for the ethics of their own actions and inaction. The "everyone was doing it" argument doesn't hold all that much water when it comes down to it. Everyone is doing a lot of things that I still must make a sacrifice of some sort to choose not to do due to ethics. My decisions are about who I am, not about who they are.

In this particular case, I believe "everyone is doing it" is a legitimate argument for participating in the patent system as-is. It's not the role of the patentee to decide what is patentable (or what should be patentable), it's the role of the legislative and judicial branch. Given a certain set of patentable concepts, it is the right and almost duty of those who come up with inventions by those definitions to participate in the patent process.

The most appropriate, ethical, behavior is to pursue patents within the current system while simultaneously working towards a better system whereby those patents would be deemed invalid. After all, this puts you in the position to give away the patents you've been granted for free, as Google has, if you truly feel they should not have been given to you in the first place.