And what is often forgotten: in fashion it is more or less enough to just look at it to "get the idea" and make "copies".
"High Tech" on the other hand is hard to copy even if you buy a truck load of originals and disassemble them. You usually have to figure out the inner workings, the materials and the processes required to create everything as well as assemble it.
Thousands of people pay thousands of dollars every year to learn just the basics required to build eg. an engine (at universities, engineering schools etc). Even companies that license new technologies often need months to bring out their products. Between the first appearance of the product, the time another company decides to license and the time it takes them to actually push the product on the market, a huge part of the potential customers has the original already anyhow and the inventor made plenty profit to pay for the development. Having no patents wouldn't change that for many successful products.

How about actually reading the source linked in the post you reply to? And maybe even the sources listed in that source? Then you would know that Watt indeed hindered progress (see Hornblower for an example). And that the progress in those 17 years of his patents on the steam engine was rather low compared to that in the next few years.

Sorry, but Watt was not the hero many people believe he was. Neither was Edison.

I don't quite see the logical connection between "one person got rich on his patents" and "patents are good for society and increase innovation". Maybe you can enlighten me?

Actually, most countries didn't have patents in the current form before the late 18th/early 19th century. And for many industries patenting is not much older than the average /. poster (e.g. pharmacy, software, business methods).

And a lot of innovation in the last 500 years was either in "young industries" that were not covered by current patent laws or despite patents. One good example is software industry. Another is the steam engine, which hardly made any progress while it Watt had his patent/monopoly, but made huge jumps shortly after.

If patents are soo good for an industry, where are all the amazing new software products developed since the USPTO started giving out software patents? All I see is a big mine field and "innovations" like the one-click-patent.

Reading tip: http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm

Make sure your friend will not just try to circumventing the patent by attaching the laser pointer to the cat's collar - there is a patent for that too: http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=1EF3AAAAEBAJ

There are currently 7 registered pirate parties in europe, namely in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Finland, Poland, Spain and Sweden. Some more are in the process of founding/achieving formal acknowledgement. See http://www.pp-international.net/ or if you prefer a colored map http://piratenpartei.de/navigation/partei/piratenparteien-weltweit (black: formally recognized; blue: active but not yet formally recognized; red: planned)