That demonstrates a problem not just with the patent system, but the legal system itself. There will always be a number of people who will cave to a legal threat if they have enough money to pay off the threat and not enough money to fight it... unless the legal threat has some sort of risk associated with the one making the threat, there will be people who take advantage of it.
As horrifying as it is, I'm actually kinda happy this nasty crap is going on. The best way to get a problem fixed is to exploit it relentlessly.
Fundamentally, the legal system is a way for individuals to invoke the state's monopoly on force to resolve disputes. That's the point. As long as there is law, there is the possibility for abuse, and that possibility is a cross-cutting concern.
Now, you say that the issue is associating some sort of risk with people invoking the legal system, but that's a very tricky path to walk down. What if you think someone breached a contract with you, but a court disagrees? Does losing a case inexorably mean you were in the wrong for having brought it?
I personally don't think that penalizing people for invoking the legal system is the way to go. The best solution is to make it cheap to reject meritless cases. After all, anybody could file suit claiming you trespassed on their land, and they could do so maliciously or mistakenly. We don't worry about frivolous suits for trespass because the underlying property right is clear and well-defined, so that if you do get sued it's really easy to show that you did not violate that right. The ease with which a case like that can be dismissed automatically disincentives people from bringing nuisance cases.
As horrifying as it is, I'm actually kinda happy this nasty crap is going on. The best way to get a problem fixed is to exploit it relentlessly.