I think of them as legalised marijuana. It is not good for you, but if it were made illegal, there will be criminal organisations providing the service. Without patents, we would be mired in NDAs dictating which company can talk to which other company about what technology, and quite possibly several open-source developers passing away in mysterious circumstances.

So I see it as unavoidable evil. The patent system makes it lawful evil as opposed to chaotic evil, which is strictly speaking an improvement.