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It’s only “easier to defend a patent lawsuit” if you have infinite money to give lawyers, infinite time to deal with it, and an infinite tolerance for stress and uncertainty in the process.
Most companies either don’t have the resources or conclude that it’s not cost-effective to reach the point of being able to reasonably argue about a patent suit’s validity, so in practice, targets threatened by patent litigation rarely have the chance to defend themselves.
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http://www.marco.org/2011/08/12/nilay-patel-the-patent-system-isnt-broken
This is precisely the problem with the patent minefield the United States Patent and Trademark Office has created for us. It’s next to impossible to not violate someone’s patent and there’s no way a lot of smaller developers can stand up to a ridiculous patent troll who’s existence is entirely dependent on sewing infringements.
Software patent systems like ours hurt everyone but the trolls. They deprive users a lot of awesome features developers would like to include but can’t without violating obvious patents that the USPTO as negligently approved. Perhaps it’s because instead of developing they’re spending all their time fighting battles in our legal system or maybe it’s due to the lack of resources because they settled. It’s a lose-lose problem situation and a gross waste of time and work that could be better used doing almost anything else.
