I wondered if, there were no software patents would the community be better off ? Does anyone know off a statistic were there are cases where it shows that companies that sued others and won, ended up paying more in the end for breaching someone elses patent.

Google bought Motorola recently and some say just to have security that android is used on the phones. They then used ,and still are, the patents as an leverage against rivals competitors.

I think as indiviudal company you can gain, but with these wars the eco system is weakend and in turn everyone is worse off.