While we might get to laugh at those silly people with their software patents (and describing them as toilet paper is quite funny) it still has real world effects for us.
For many years I had to install a linux distro and then mess around with freetype because there was a valid patent on subpixel hinting that was valid in the US and irrelevant in Europe but because the distro's I used at the time where US based I got caught in the cross fire.
Given the huge imbalance between US tech and Europe Tech (and rest of the world really) in software they sneeze, we get flu.
That only stopped been a problem when the patents expired[1].
That's why you should always use either European or Canadian mirrors.
On FreeType, maybe Clear Type related; but I remember some slight hinting methods not related to cleartype which looked far superior on flat LCD screens IMHO.
Another one was Lame and MP3. And I remember the codecs issue with the Penguin Liberation Front for Mandrake, LIVNA for another distro and Debian Multimedia, among others.
Also, this might be tangentially related to Fractan. Any Mathematician there? if there's some relation, the patent might be void/null.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRACTRAN