[throwawaykf02]

>I find it absurd that FRAND patents are practically valueless

They are not really "valueless", but are weaker simply because their holders pledged them to FRAND license terms in order to get them into a standard. Most standards-essential patents aren't "essential" because there's no other way to do the same thing, but because they're part of a standard that everyone must adhere to in order to be inter-compatible.

As such, patent-holders always have the option of not having them be part of a standard. However, in these cases, they made the bet that getting a small but guaranteed royalty was better than not having it used in a standard, and likely not being used anywhere at all and thus being truly valueless.