Spoken like bankers.
If you are just shifting reserve ratios, interest rates and allocating value between tiers of capital for a living, perhaps you don't need patents. Especially if you take the electronic marvels you use for granted. If you want to get just about anything new funded, you need patents, copyrights, mineral rights or some form of IP. Why make a movie or write a book if anyone can freely pirate it?
Without patents, everyone would be standing around waiting to be a 'fast follower' and no one would make the risky investments to go first because it would be financial folly. Try the 'dark ages' for an economic model.
Anyone who has raised capital from investors will tell you that investors are critically interested in understanding the IP of any company they invest in.
When talking about getting rid of patents put the words mineral rights, property rights, copyrights, in place of the word patents and you will quickly see just how absurd this nonsense is.
