What is a patent worth?

I had heard the other day that Apple had gotten a patent on the I-Phone which i have no problem with, seeing how if I invented something I would wanted to be protected too; but what I heard chilled me to the bone. According to the first reports I heard Apple owned ALL touchscreen tech, this is not true and could not be, but I did decide to research it, this is what took me so long to do this post, after all goverment runs about as well as a car trying to fly, one fresh from the junkyard at that. What I have found is confusing, at best, on one side of the Internet you have the priests of Apple, who come daily to the shrine, and on the other you have those which would rather smash the Mac then look at it. Their is a great divide between these two parties as you can tell, and I fall nearly on the line of the smashers. I will try to be objective and professional in my assesment of what might possibly be one the greatest lawsuits of the decade.
The reason I believe this may become a debacle is because even before the I-Phone was patented their were patent lawsuits flying. One such reason I found comes from http://excelusergroup.orgwww.techdirt.com/articles/20071203/191306.shtml in this article it is discussing how even though the I-Phone was filing for at least 200 patents; it's greatest innovation was that it combines multiple technologies, many of which were patented and being used without permission. Another issue I take with this patent is from http://www.macobserver.com/article/2008/07/03.9.shtml here it is discuusing human movement being patented, this is a new breed of Ego-centric thinking for even Steve Jobs, perhaps next it will be us that he patents, or more likely the English language. This sound like a joke to me, for like when the Australian patent lawyer managed to patent the wheel in order to test the new patent laws.
In all fairness I have no problem with the I-Phone at all, but based on what I've heard so far the patent is questionable; my personal dislike of Steve Jobs aside, due to his ego, the true problem with the patent is as according to one analyst the true patent may not even belong to Apple in the end. What did I just say, all of my unprofessional attitude was for naught, it seems that the man who had a major hand in invent the patented technology, who is not on the patent by the way, was awarded many of his patents during the development of many of these technologies while at the University of Delaware; this may mean that the University may actually own the technology.
This post as primarily been a rant over the rumors and speculation on the web about the I-Phone patent, but i would like to wrap it up with what all of this junk is most likely really about. I agree with the analyst mentioned earlier, Apple is trying to slow Windows development of touchscreen use in their Windows products, namely the upcoming Windows 7. Apple knows that patents only last so long and that if they have any real chance at retaking the PC market they will have to develop something which Windows does not have, like a highly advanced touchscreen interface. The answer to the title of this post is one word, time; and if Steve Jobs health continues to decline, which I personally hope it does not, may be very little time left for him to see Apple retake the PC market.