No, it is not necessarily a good thing. But I can think of at least one time in which Apple acquired a patent for something for the purpose of keeping it off the market for the benefit of users. . . and if I recall correctly it was a means of breaking spam filters. I do not recall all of the details now, but Apple under Steve Jobs, bought a company that had developed something that was capable of easily compromising everyone's spam filters. . . and never utilized it. It is no longer useful because spam filter technology supposed the means used by that technology. But Apple kept it off the market until it had.
Shortly after that, Apple came out with their Heuristic Spam filter system, then the best there was.
Somehow I'm having a hard time imagining that anybody who'd use that would care about patents.