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It’s both. Patents are just a legal tool, and can be used and/or abused as the imperfect regulations allow.
It’s a legal tool that turns ideas into property. This allows capital to exercise power over it and profit through it, and on top of that inhibits innovation. So l’d say there is no use or abuse, it’s a bad legal framework that doesn’t achieve societal benefits.
So to be fair it's not like all patents are" I have an idea and I want to stop others from using it". Many are companies submitting technical documentation that the company spent millions of dollars to develop, they should get a head start on using it. After the patent expires everyone can use the tech that the original developer may have kept as trade secret instead. Of course they can be abused like most other things but there is definitely a use case for patents.
Of course it does… patent law as it stands goes hand-in-hand with capitalist economic systems. Patents are intended to incentivize investing in ideas. (That’s a lot of ‘i’s!)
On the other hand, people who come up with ideas are workers, too, and a system devoid of any means to discourage/prevent parasitic engagement—wherein others reap the rewards of these workers’ labor—doesn’t seem like the opposite of capitalism, either.
Edit: To be clear, I think current regulations need improvement, and am in no way defending patent trolls. If the intend goal of patent law does not align with its observed ramifications, the law should be changed.
It requires capital to obtain a patent and to defend a patent, workers are inherently excluded from this proces.
Again, you’ve identified a problem with the current implementation of patent law, not patents themselves.
I'm starting to get the feeling that we are both repeating ourselves, but this is not a just a side effect, it is systematic. Turning an idea into property means only capital can play the game. In effect patents do two things: Firstly they inhibits innovation, the exact opposite of what they are supposed to do, this should be ground enough to get rid of them. Second they entrench big players, big players have more money to play the patent game and so tend to win patent fights regardless of merit. So besides not achieving their so called stated goal they also have a huge negative externality. And all this before we even take patent trolls into account.