Last time I checked lawsuits cost lots of money, this saves the consumer the expense of paying for the lawsuit. Whether the law should or shouldn't be this way

Last time I checked lawsuits cost lots of money, this saves the consumer the expense of paying for the lawsuit. Whether the law should or shouldn't be this way is a matter for another discussion. The current reality is that getting sued for patent infringement can be VERY costly. Assuming Amazon is a reasonably rational economic agent they would probably choose the lawsuit if it had a lower expected cost compared to licensing the patent portfolio, or reimplementing the infringing code in a non-infringing manner. Thus licensing a patent portfolio reduces costs for the consumer, of course it could be argued that with out patents Amazon wouldn't have to pay, but the current situation is that we have patents.