Don't consumers have some protection here? I mean, they probably bought the wifi at a common store. You don't normally walk out of Walmart with a box containing a product you expect to not legally be able to use.

Legally I believe that's an issue between the consumer and the merchant and/or manufacturer.

Legally, it depends. A bit of web searching did turn up (so far) one LinkSys router that explicitly disclaims implied warranty of non-infrigement. If that is disclaimed, then yes, it falls to the consumer to deal with it.