As regards the trial, the best case scenario is a precendent where crap soft patents can be invalidated easily, and the USPTO being more carefull about what soft patents it accepts (hoping for abolishing soft patents in the US is unrealistic, since soft patents are now a business by itself among venture capitalist firms)

As the discussion continued, Koh grew even more frustrated, telling the parties that the conversation would come at the expense of their trial time. "I'm billing time because you all are being unreasonable," she said.

There is no exception to patent monopolies for open technologies, but that might be a fascinating dynamic to explore. The original motivation for the patent system to publish information is unneeded for open technologies since they're already explicitly open. If open source were legally protected from patent lawsuits, it would free open source companies from the overhead and burden of the patent system. They would no longer have to defend themselves in a patent system that provides them with absolutely no benefit.