"Software company dedicated to helping parents of chronically ill children research treatment decisions sued for billions for patent infringement."

This actually happens, only replace "software company" with "pharmaceutical company". Johnson & Johnson and similar pharmaceutical companies makes it very hard for people to get cheap medicines by greedily enforcing their patents, which are more legitimate compared to most software patents. These pharmaceutical also lobbied and were rewarded with laws(masked as safety precautions,) that prevents the importation of cheaper medicine from Canada. Let's face it, this "protection racket" is a billion dollar scam that's only going to end by infiltrating the powers that be. When all the major players: Google, Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Sun, and Oracle decide that this nonsense must stop and copyright laws are sufficient, the protection racket will end. They have the money and influence to make the change.