Could you please provide an example? From what specifically have any patents protected users of an open source product? I know plenty of examples when patents were used to harm the users, the most notorious one being Oracle and Java. But I don't remember a single case where users of an open source product were protected from anything with a patent owned by a big for-profit company, would be happy to know a concrete example that shows that this protection outweighs the risk of a company harming open source users.