I think it'd be interesting to put that assertion to the test: has Apple really been more litigious with their patent portfolio than Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, and Google (as totally random examples pulled from thin air)? I'm honestly not sure of the answer; but, I'm skeptical that Apple is "worse" than other major tech companies in this regard.
"has Apple really been more litigious with their patent portfolio than Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, and Google"
There's no question that Apple has been more litigious than Google. Google stands pretty much alone these days as one of the tech giants who hasn't been an asshole when it comes to abusing the patent system.
Example: Hadoop is an open source implementation of Google's MapReduce and GFS papers, both technologies are patented by Google and were huge competitive advantages for them in their main business. Did Google go around suing people using Hadoop? No, they granted Apache a liberal blanket patent license to make sure anyone who used Hadoop would be secure in knowing they weren't going to be sued for it.
Up until fairly recently Microsoft was also pretty good with patents but lately they've become schizophrenic (some groups in the company have been doing good things to calm fears of patent suits stemming from Mono, some groups have been shaking down Android licensees for patent fees).
IBM has a long history of patent abuse. Oracle too (though not to the scale of IBM in their prime).
All other companies typically recognize that nobody ever invented anything on their own and the industry would be dead if products were banned because of infringements. So they settle either for royalties or a cross-licensing deal.
Not so with Apple. They want Android smartphones banned from the market.
Exactly, it's not so much the suits themselves as the goal they're pursuing. To extend the OP's metaphor, it's not enough to "hate the game" when one player is trying to change the rules. (To be clear, though, the game is indeed a terrible thing.)
