The FTC weighs in on patent reform (opensource.com)

Duh. This is by design.

Large corporations often support software patents because it creates artificial barriers for competition.

That is they can afford to pay millions of dollars in fees to the government, pay millions of dollars in fees to lawyers, million dollars of licensing fees to other major corporations, and millions of dollars in lost lawsuits. They don't give a shit how much it costs really because the pass the costs directly to their customers.

However companies and individuals that are not established cannot afford this and thus they are locked out of the market.

Given the choice between forcing their customers to pay the costs for a fascist system versus having to deal with true capitalistic competition large companies like Microsoft or Apple will choose to pass costs to the public every single time.