Lawyers are nothing but hired guns to fight battles. An attorney is required to provide the best defense or offense for their client regardless of what they think of their client. If attorneys started refusing to provide legal defenses for the worst of the worst then how would we really know who they are; the government would be free jail most anyone by claiming them "the worst of the worst."

The biggest source of lobbying for software patents are companies like MS and groups like the Business Software Alliance not patent attorneys (unless they are paid for doing the lobbying.) This are the same people that have pushed for SOPA and ProtectIP. (MS and BSA rescinded their support, I think, after all our hue and cry.)

Your example of software patents falls flat. You are absolutely right about software patents; they should not exist. But, it's not the patent lawyers that are creating the problems, it's the people that hire the lawyers that are the root problem. (In most cases these people are not attorneys but usually Wall Street, vulture capital types.)

The real reason that lawyers have a bad rap is that they can win big $$$ for their clients from corporations thus cutting into their profits ergo a long-term on-going swiftboat of them. What people forget is that is people like them -- people like us -- that are sitting on those juries and making these awards in the name of justice and in attempting to prevent future damages to the common good. As long as an attorney can get $100 million from a company like Exxon when they purposely give someone cancer, attorneys will be vilified by those who care more about their profits than our well-being; it's called negative advertising and it works.

A simple question. It is my understanding from my local Verizon store that I own my phone. Assuming this is true, and Motorola does chose to brick your phone, than Motorola is destroying your property. According to this same logic, Microsoft should be able to brick my portable simply because it came with Windows and choose to run Linux. So, who owns your cell phone anyway? You, your provider, or the company that made the phone?

I can tell you what Bill Gates did to get there -- he created an illegal monopoly (see the court records) with a crap single-user unsecured O/S and forced everyone to buy it. He also used the same approach for his Microsoft Office and other products. Even today the "Microsoft tax" is prevalent on most any non-Apple PC you buy.
As to his benevolence -- it is part and parcel of the PR campaign started after his testimony in the monopoly lawsuit which showed Bill Gates for who he really is He was asked recently if he would use his holdings for force companies to prevent the damages they are doings (and which his donations are working to alleviate) and he said no; so much for his desire to really help.

Why you prevailed when being sued:
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids all men to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread -- the rich as well as the poor."
- Anatole France, Crainquebille, 1902

Why you lost your suit:
  The purpose of government is to defend the rich from the poor (Adam Smith's "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations")

Microsoft is the only place I've every worked that hired other engineers remove the ongoing responsibility of performance and debug from development engineers. They should require that a developer has to maintain whatever they work on for at least a year after release.