It feels more like an arms-race to me. Where I work we patent stuff for defensive purposes only, so we have something when we get sued (and we have been).
Maybe that's just another boogieman, but it seems unless everybody stops nobody can.
America needs to learn how to evolve our system of industrial production. Our society of lawyers and paperpushers is going to get annihilated in the next ten years at this rate.
I do not like it one bit, but that does seem to be state of the software world right now.