I find it sad to watch. Any hope of patent reform in the US got a lot bleaker in 2011 due to the billions being spent on defensive portfolios, especially in the mobile space. There's no way these companies are going to let any legislation pass that invalidates their 'investments'. The best we seem to be able to hope for is that Google uses theirs defensively only, or adds them to copyleft-style patent pools like openinventionnetwork.com or openpatents.org. I harbor little hope that Apple or MS would do the same.