Patents are intended to incentivize people to reveal their secrets in exchange for a temporary monopoly on the secrets. They are not meant as vehicles purely for making profit, but that is how they are being abused - by people who buy up patents and then sue anyone who infringes, or by people who patent as broadly as possible and then sue anyone who infringes. Useful for making money, not useful for the intended purpose of contributing work for the greater good of all people.
The patent system is too broken. Anyone who writes software should hate patents. Anything you write will infringe on some patent out there. If all you want is money then writing software isn't the best way to go about getting it.
A better system would be one where patents do not give protection to ideas, but do give minor tax incentives to the people who own and use a related patent in their business. Then their ideas are shared, but not using the patents gives them nothing, and they cannot block others from using the all too often obvious ideas.