Intellectual property monopolists should not even exist in the first place, much less have "rights" to "defend" in court, real or perceived. The whole premise is absurd to begin with. I can't believe it got to the point where people are debating the relative morality of monopolists defending their "rights".
Every single owner of intellectual property is a monopolist. The government grants them a monopoly on the information for a number of years.
Patents are somewhat tolerable monopolies: they tend to last only a quarter of our lifetimes. Once they expire, the information is freed from their "ownership".
Nintendo didn't build their fortunes on patents, though. They built it on copyrights. You and I will likely be long dead before those works enter the public domain. If they ever do.
