After all, it seems Google bought Motorola for patents and attacking Apple and co'. I know, Google is not directly suing Apple, but the act of giving those patents to HTC constitutes to suing Apple.
This lets Google and Microsoft sue other companies over patent issues without actually doing it themselves.
it seems to be the new style of patent warfare.
The real benefit of the proxy wars was that the level of indirection was believed to make an all-out nuclear conflict less likely, and that large chunks of the general population could be kept in the dark, unable to wrap their heads around "why we're over there".
The other oddity is that those same patents are now off the table for any other Android OEM to use to sue Apple or Microsoft. Was HTC the weakest one and so Google felt giving them those patents was a balancing act and other vendors are having their own credible patents to not need these 9. We will never know I think.