Heh, software patents dont hold up to well... hehehe 
... Due to the fact that re-verse engineering of software is illegal, and Trade secret pollicies ( NDF ) stop employees for talking about anything they are working on... no one can proove a thing if you have use their software patent... hehehe
Oh, John Carmack told the world of his "Carmack Reverse Algorythm", but found himself in breach of a patent... another words, if your using a software patent, keep your mouth shut, and nobody would know...
That's NDA, Non Disclosure Agreement, not NDF.
And there wouldn't be so many software patent licensing and lawsuits if they were unenforceable. I don't know how far up your ass you reach to make statements, but they are wrong. Many patents are revoked, as they were not qualified to be patents in the first place. There are differences in enforceability as well as legality between US and European patents.
Here's a nice list of some software patents, successful and non.
Note that by NOT finding out if you infringed on a patent (or purposely ignoring it as is the case with Sony here), you can be fined up the ass. This is what would have happened to Carmack (and, really, he got off really lucky. If it had become known to Creative after the Doom3 engine had been licensed, Creative could have taken him for half of the sales on the Doom3 engine. It wouldn't be hard to prove that the alrogithm they own is what made the engine popular.).
Not that software patents matter, this (the patent Sony was stupid enough to break) was a completely and totally legitimate patent as they have classically been defined. Sony infringed upon it and has to pay considerably for it.
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