There are absolutely huge issues with the patent system, but Microsoft's patent licensing profits are not among them.
But when it happens to HTC, Samsung, etc it's just: "why shouldn't they get a return from that investment?"
Microsoft (or any other company for the matter) demanding patent royalties after treating to sue a product they had no hand in producing, is wrong.
Earning more money form their patent extortion from a competitor's product than it's own implementation, it's just sad and pathetic.
Is this the kind of ideal use of software patents that rewards innovators and end-consumers?
Deleted comment
Google has every right to be able to develop their OS and license it at whatever terms or cost they see fit especially when they ultimately benefit consumers. MS tried to use their cash warchest (acquired from their Monopoly markets) to acquire offensive obvious, broad landmine patents that they hide behind NDA's so to not disclose exactly what patents Android is supposed to have infringed on so that they can extort licensing fees from Android Manufacturers into artificially raising the prices of Android devices.
They should get a return. But nothing they created contributed to Android, so they shouldn't be extorting money from Android vendors.
The patents that Microsoft has been willing to assert publicly against Android are dominated by FAT patents which describe a system for working around the limits of Microsoft's own file system. Nobody wants to use Microsoft's file system for its own merits -- plenty of free systems exist that have none of its drawbacks and Android uses them internally. Android uses FAT only to interchange information with Microsoft systems and others based on their backwards filesystem. The patent system has been abused to allow Microsoft to block compatibility without contributing anything technological. It's a classical failure mode of the patent system which was supposed to promote innovation and publication, not vendor lock in.