Citation please?

Here's a citation for the opposite claim (that plenty of companies pay unreasonably large amounts of money on patents, sometimes exceeding R&D spending): http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9229100/Can_the_U.S._...

Some highlights for 2011:

Apple $2.4 billion $R&D, $2.6 billion for their share of Rockstar Bidco (Nortel patents)

Google $5.2 billion R&D, $12.5 billion Motorola Mobility. Note that Google still qualifies even if you just count the Motorola "patent spend" at Google's recent $5.5 billion valuation of Motorola's patents and technology, rather than the cost of the whole acquisition.

You do know that Apple does most of what can be classed as R&D through its normal P/L operating units. So it's not like there is a separate iOS R&D team specifically churning out patents. Patents can and do come from ANY engineers across the company. It's the same at most companies.