Big companies love to file bullshit software patents like this. I think I read a comment somewhere that said their coworkers used to have competition on who can got the most ridiculous patents approved by the patent office.

Instead of using patents for innovation, those big companies then use those patents as a weapon. They can basically sue anyone for anything thanks to their broad portfolio of bullshit patents. It's basically like a nuke for them, big companies won't sue each other because the other big companies also have nuke, so anyone who attack with nuke will also get nuked. We've seen it play out between Apple, Google and Qualcomm in the past (e.g. multitouch battle, modem battle, etc).

Patent trolls are different though, they are usually a non practicing entity. Suing them is useless because they don't do any business except hoarding patents, so they are not afraid of getting counter-sued for patent infringements. The worst that can happen is getting their stupid patents invalidated.

So yeah, I think software patents are basically useless and a drain to society.