Contextualizing the $1 billion in royalty payments across other business lines is useful. Though a comparison with its net financials would be more appropriate. Microsoft's revenues in 2014 were $86.8 billion, net income $22.1 billion.
Devices and Consumer were $37.7 billion, of which $18.8 billion were licensing, the remainder being hardware (computer and gaming, phones, other), and "other". Commercial revenue was $49.6 billion, with $42.0 billion in licensing (OS desktop and server, Office, and commercial Cloud products).
http://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar14/index.html
So, yes, Samsung's contributing a lot in some business lines, but comparatively little (yes, a billion dollars is comparatively little) overall.
This does highlight the challenges Microsoft has had in expanding beyond its traditional desktop and small server markets. But those markets continue to serve the company very, very, very well.
In the "bad" category: the assumption that patents are valid and that innovation elsewhere somehow "owes" Microsoft. The long, long history of patents and patent abuse suggests that this isn't the case, but that a large trove of patents is effectively a potent weapon and threat to wave around -- its primary benefit is in being able to proclaim "not doing as we request of you is going to prove hugely expensive to you", in a "lovely business you've got here, it'd be a shame if anything were to happen to it" kind of a way.
But an interesting (if still insufficiently contextualized) factoid.