It's worth pointing out that as an end user you are not necessarily required to determine whether the programs you use violate any patents, it is primarily the authors/distributors of the software who can be held to account, especially if they claim otherwise.

The targets in any litigation will naturally be those who can be shown to have profited in some direct monetary form from writing/distributing the offending material, which may potentially also include an organisation that deploys such software and relies upon that functionality for operational purposes. This is why it is very important for Linux distributions to identify and properly segregate such potentially damaging software so that companies can use it confidently, regardless of any amount of inconvenience this might cause to users by having to install restricted components manually.