Red Hat CEO hates patent trolls, but says sometimes you just have to pay up (Network World)

Exactly, and furthermore another patent trolls will come once they hear about a company which willing to pay.

Yet depending on numerous costly legal defenses can cause a company bleed itself to death, slowly.

I'm starting to think that the law is designed to enrich the lawyers.

To be fair - although Kipling tells a good yarn, the reality is that many places did pay Danegeld, and despite that today Denmark doesn't send raiders to demand more silver.

The raiders were perfectly serious. They probably couldn't have taken and held England, but they might easily have done enough damage to make the taxes seem like a small cost by comparison. In fact in some cases records of "danegeld" are for a tax that was used to pay mercenaries to fight invading Danes... I doubt the taxpayer felt one tax more lightly than the other.

Danegeld is now a historical curiosity (resulting in some really cool runestones, check out the Wikipedia page) and one day Software Patents will be too. Meanwhile it may sometimes make sense to pay, even after taking Kipling's warning into account.