Well if the best examples you could come up with are:

* from 100 years ago, one that would happen anyway because tech progresses, patents or not

* one that that wasn't correct one as they didn't patent VRRP (which was another open source competition to it), they tried to patent troll it

and both of them were "proper use", not "we will try to make our patent as wide as possible so we can stifle any competition"...

I think the claim of being entirely useless, at least in most spaces is very valid. There are some techs that take years and millions (medical drugs come into mind), but vast majority of patents are just stifling technical progress, and especially on software side