Intellectual Ventures started as a sort of patent pool for small inventors, at least purportedly. The idea was, as a small inventor, you could pay IV or, I think, contribute patents, or some combination of both, and IV would protect you from patent litigation. They only recently started suing people through shell companies. I'm pretty sure most of those companies invested in IV before it started trolling, but I'm having trouble looking up the info. I'll edit later if I find anything.

Hedging?

Nothing requires their company to be ideologues against patents.

(except for "Don't be evil")

-- signed, an EFF member

Intellectual Ventures has way more than these couple patents. Google/Apple's user base is more important than these couple patents. They only have them to protect themselves, not to assert them, so invalidating them won't do anything.

I suspect that as a result of some out of court settlement with Intellectual Ventures, people are asked to invest. I also suspect that the best lawyers in the world - and apple and google have the best in the world - pick the fights they have a chance of winning. A similar example is http://www.iwf.org.uk/.