Every software company in the world violates dozens to thousands of patents. If we all properly “played by the rules,” we’d be paralyzed by patents. No software could exist without a patent licensing team (internal or external), the overheads of which would make many ventures not worthwhile to pursue. Often you’d need to pay twice or more for the same concept, because most patents are vague and overlap with others. The combined patent licensing fees & terms would be crippling.

Software businesses (and others) currently exist at the mercy of patent-rights holders. As soon as they grow fat enough, the ROI on suing them makes it worthwhile. The case of PMC vs YouTube is a representative example.

The US patent system, as it is now, does not make the world a better place. It stifles innovation, where it should be fostering it.

Copyright, on the other hand, is much harder to violate. A software company can do business with much less fear of unknowingly breaching copyright. The copyright discussion is sufficiently different and unrelated to the patent discussion that raising it as an argument seems a little whataboutery.