I don't mean in the form that they exist today but the original ideal behind them: that they can protect someone with little to no money from being steam rolled when they come up with a new invention / novel idea that is taken by the bigger guys. At least this felt like the original intent of patents but it simply can't work like that today.

And yeah owning an idea is terrible. It would have been nice to at least be required to demonstrate the idea being patented. But that opens all sorts of issues.