They are fearful maybe because they might be beaten by the small player.
And Apple has said before that they'd rather have these companies (Samsung, HTC, etc) make a license agreement for the patents (like Microsoft's and HTC's deal with each other) rather than sue them or try to block the sale of their products.
It's not like Apple's the only one that does this either, most recently Motorola/Google tried to block iPhone/iPad sales in Germany over iCloud.
Also, what was Google's involvement in this? Stop reading the blogs of shills.
I think this whole thing (companies suing each other over things like this) is wrong, but It's how the system works and so Apple has to play as well.
2) Apple have expressly stated that they have no interest in licensing their patents to Android manufacturers.
And the Samsung conglomerate is huge, with $220 billion in yearly revenue and ~350000 employees. Apple's revenue in 2011 was half that.