Re:Awesome! (Score 1)

Really? I would think that being able to benefit from your labor and creativity is a strong incentive. Strong enough that the person who does it best gets rewarded accordingly, and only indirectly (though substantially) does the public benefit. The public benefit is frosting on the cake. Protection of an individual's claim to their own work is the heart of it.

Not even slightly. Since he said it better than I could, I'll quote Thomas Babington Macauley (he's talking about copyright, but the principle is the same):

The advantages arising from a system of copyright are obvious. It is desirable that we should have a supply of good books; we cannot have such a supply unless men of letters are liberally remunerated; and the least objectionable way of remunerating them is by means of copyright.[...]

I believe, Sir, that I may with safety take it for granted that the effect of monopoly generally is to make articles scarce, to make them dear, and to make them bad. [...] It is good that authors should be remunerated; and the least exceptionable way of remunerating them is by a monopoly. Yet monopoly is an evil. For the sake of the good we must submit to the evil; but the evil ought not to last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose of securing the good.

Patents are a contract between society and inventors: Keep inventing good things, and we'll protect your claims long enough that you may profit. There is no "right" to profit solely from your ideas; it is a privilege society grants in exchange for something of sufficient value. This privilege is being abused by a fucked-in-the-head system and understandably avaricious opportunists.