There's a linked article (http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/07/book-review-7-08....) and at one point it asks why Bill Gates appears to support patents, given how bad they seem to be for large non-pharma / chemical firms. My guess is, big companies don't want to argue against patents, because that would create an even worse PR storm when they sue their competitors for patent infringements, and could possibly give competitors some kind of protection through Estoppel (I don't know, and I'm not a lawyer, but I'd imagine there might be some kind of legal risk to talking down patents then trying to enforce them).
That's probably true, and it's also not clear that patents are a net loss for large established companies. Sure they have to pay off or fight the trolls, but they can use questionable patents themselves to shut down competitors, as we're seeing now with Apple and Microsoft trying to kill Android. It's the same principle as Walmart supporting minimum wage increases or Mattel supporting more extensive product testing regulations.
"they can use questionable patents themselves to shut down competitors"
Particularly small competitors, who cannot afford to go into a legal battle with a large multinational. Android is kind of a special case in that Google has a warchest of patents and a lot of money. Most companies would be forced to simply roll over because of the expense of five years of legal proceedings.
Which is interesting because until then they managed without. When they needed to create a warchest they had the cash to do it and it didn't think long. It probably wasn't a bad strategy to wait until the last minute to start buying patents. Sure they might have overpaid compared to what they would have paid years ago, yet back then they needed the money to grow, now they have enough for patents.
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