What is your point? Yes, I am sure Dragon has patents on certain ways of doing speech recognition, and if you want to use those methods you must pay Dragon. So what?
The purpose of patents is to spur innovation. Doing what someone else is already doing, the same way they are doing it, is not innovation.
If you are unable to copy (whether or not you 'designed it from scratch') what Dragon is doing, maybe you should do something ELSE. Maybe there is a better way to do speech recognition. Maybe you should focus your attention on something other than speech recognition. Those efforts could lead to real innovation, efforts that would otherwise be wasted doing what already has been done.
Read up on something like the history of the steam engine. Watt was motivated by financial gain. He patented his engine and rigorously defended it. Other people saw a lucrative market for steam powered engines, and set about making their own engines that were different than what Watt did. That drove innovation. And the same pattern is repeated throughout history.