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Patents are not bad. Frivolous patents that sneak by the patent office are bad. Patents allow creative persons to reap the rewards of their creativity for a certain period of time before others can cash in at the inventor's expense just because they have more capital available. If you couldn't protect a truly original idea, the incidence of truly original ideas would decline.
At one point, my company has a nice mechanical design based on an original idea. Our end-of-tape detector sucked rocks. A large company wanted to trade the rights to use their EOT detector for rights to use our device. We said, "No". It was a hallmark of our device, instantly recognizable. They said, "Okay, we're gonna use it. You'll be ten years in the courts before you win, and we'll be through with it by that time." And they did. One is powerless enough, even with rights; no need to exacerbate it by making people give their goods and possessions to another just because the other can't hack it.
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