That’s what Michael Kanellos asserts in Why I love patents and copyrights, at c|net. A snippet:

Although it's not a really popular sentiment these days, I think patents, trademarks and copyrights are simply fantastic and a primary, necessary driver of the world economy. Without them, the rapid pace of technological innovation around the world would slow to a crawl. And frankly, without them, most open-source projects would rapidly wither away: without an intellectual property behemoth like Microsoft to fight, what would be the point?

Why all the frothy sentiment? Intellectual property provides one of the most dependable means toward wealth and independence in the world today. In the Dark Ages, one could obtain wealth by raising an army and burning someone else's kingdom to the ground. In the Gilded Age, those on the fast track had a secret weapon of success: they bribed state legislators to obtain canal and railroad contracts.

Unfortunately, those career options just aren't as viable as they once were. Instead, we have to invent stuff, and thus people should get compensated for the effort.

And it does take effort. Think of Larry Page toiling away on the early PageRank patents. Think of Mark and Colleen Hayward. Imagine all those evenings they had to spend listening to Donovan spout Celtic gibberish or helping get John Bonham out of hotel security custody during those years they amassed their photo and video collection. Surely some reward is in order.

His examples crack me up ... and of course, he tosses out the usual, lame observation regarding those who have “strong, emotional reactions against patents and copyrights” in his conclusion. This piece is rather akin to an attention-whore type post, and I’m sure he’ll be getting plenty of comments from c|net readers on it.

All the same, his piece does raise some good starting points for a more serious conversation. Does intellectual property protectionism – which is what patent, trademark, and copyright law is – drive the economy overall, or is it a net drag on it? Is it the driving force behind most technological innovation? Would there be no open source coding if Microsoft weren’t around?

Remember the guidelines for conversation here: be civil; attack ideas, rather than the person; and if you want to include hotlinks to source material (encouraged), I think you can include three in a comment without triggering the comment-spam daemon.