To be fair though, the patents were filed with the intention of corporate defense. That is, if a company like IBM sued them again, they could use the patents that they had to come to some sort of low-damage settlement. When Oracle bought Sun, this defense became an offensive weapon - something far different than the Viacom situation. Repurposing joke patents is far different from fabricating evidence.
And I wouldn't be surprised if some of the people who tried to file joke patents are now working for Oracle, which is also suing Google.