For a starting background, you can look at items returned by this Google; noting such things as 6000 patents, and $4.5 billion. That is not a bad auction for the patent portfolio of a firm in bankruptcy.
A common theme, Google's Android mobile device OS is taking market share but Google needs patents.
It must be true. Google must believe that. It bought patents. Click the below image to read, (from here for the entire item), and note such detail as $12.5 billion, and 17,000 patents worldwide, 7000 in the hatchery process [patent pending].
Now -- Google has patents. The lawyers on all sides are cheering - it likely will not end quickly.
Perhaps such added cost factors as fattening the lawyers explains why the handheld things cost so much, and why the monthly contract charges are horrendous. That and plain naked greed of phone service provides, (a factor dating back probably no further than Alexander Graham Bell).
_________________UPDATE_______________
This is an enjoyable item, if you like reading "what-if" discourse. Those numbers can make your head spin. Not quite Pentagon numbers, but not something you would find in the center or betting squares of any Mystic Lake gambling table either.
BIG numbers.
____________FURTHER UPDATE______________
Aug 23, 2011, local BizJournal, here, "Google buys patents from Twin Cities company."