It has nothing to do with the patent and everything to do with collecting insurance.
To draw an analogy, imagine your car runs out of gas near the top of a mountain. You put on the e-brake, and assess your situation. The nearest gas station is 20 miles away, and it's snowing, so there is no way you can walk it, and there is no other traffic on the road to offer you some help. Sucks to be you, but you should have planned better. You could let go of the e-brake, and roll down the mountain in reverse, but there is just a deserted valley at the bottom - it would not improve your situation. But, a ha! You realize that you are only 20' from the top of the hill. the gas station is still 20 miles away, but it's all down hill. If you can push your car to the top of the hill, you can then roll all the way to the gas station using gravity to power your car.
But, alas, a lawyer pops out of the woods, and hands you a document stating that you are not allowed to push your car up the hill and then use gravitational potential energy to get to the gas station, because Acme, Inc has been issued a patent on that process, and you are not allowed to use it without their consent. Coincidentally, you have an ongoing lawsuit against Acme, Inc, for a completely unrelated reason. They tell you "Drop this lawsuit, and we'll let you use our push-up-the-hill process to save your car".
That is pretty much what happened in this circumstance.
Yes, the engine failed to operate properly. No one is blaming the patents for that. The satellite got stuck in an unusable orbit due to the engine failure, but was otherwise still functional. Since launching things into orbit is very expensive, and the things being launched are very expensive, the company that owns the satellite will try pretty much anything within reason to recoup their costs. One option, popularized by Belbruno and Ridenoure from an similar incident in the past, involves using only a small amount of fuel, to send the satellite around the moon and back, which would make it possible to put the satellite into the correct orbit around the earth. THIS is what was denied them due to the patent on the low energy orbital transfer that Boeing apparently has. So, it is not the fault of the patent system that the rocket initially failed, but it is the fault of the patent system that the company was not legally allowed to recover it's still-functional property.
edit: I should add that, yes, SES Americom may have committed insurance fraud if they didn't disclose to their insurance company that the satellite was recoverable for $50M(the cost of dropping the lawsuit against Boeing). However, that doesn't change the fact that they were prevented from essentially running their engine at particular times due to patents.
I'm pretty sure that insurance companies can't consider the estimated cost of a civil suit as a fungible asset like that. They could no more insist that SES comply if Boeing had asked them to kill Boeing's mother in exchange for a trajectory license. After all, it costs less than $50M to kill someone.
Your analogy makes no sense, the failed launch has nothing to do with the patent, the patent just stopped an attempt at saving the satellite. So more like the factory caught on fire and no firetrucks could come because a competing factory had patented the route from the firehouse.
Steve laid down his MacPad Pro next to the water cooler and hailed Tom over. "Guess what, I took the A9 this morning, I don't know why I don't do it more often, no traffic, no headaches, pure bliss." Tom eyed him with a frown, waiting a couple of seconds before replying. "The A9? You have a family Steve, aren't you worried about them?" "What do you mean?" "Don't you know that entire route is patented? What happens if your plates' RFID tag comes up in a random check and they find out you haven't licensed it? The lawsuit would drag you under for sure."
However, you could probably patent a system that uses real time satellite imagery to discover the location and magnitude of ocean currents, predict what they will be for the next week, and then calculate the the ideal routes for a fleet of cargo ships in real time. But, the patent is only going to last 20 years and shipping companies would probably just wait you out. Then again, I expect that patent probably exists and expired a long time ago.
If somebody else used the same equations I've used, but made the calculation on his abakus, and steered his ship by himself, he wouldn't infringe my patent, I think.
Indeed, which is why it's not what happened. Repeat after me: you cannot patent an idea, only a mechanism for implementing an idea.
The patent in question is for the idea of "moving a satellite" using the mechanism of a certain class of trajectories.
So how is this not what happened?