Well the system doesn't work at all for the little guy. I was talking patent/copyright in general. As far as software patents, my own opinion is software is obviously copyrightable but not patentable. However, that is not the current viewpoint legally, and this serves the interests of big entities not small ones.

I support IP rights. But the current system is seriously broken. Let's say I invent something totally new and innovative (which I have done many times). And I choose not to patent it. So my competitor reverse engineers my product and then patents it and sues me. What now? I can tell you because this is exact thing has happened to me. I get sued and the court case will take 5 years and require calling costly expert witnesses and the jury won't understand a word of the testimony and will flip a coin in the end. Regardless of what their decision is, I am bankrupt and the big company only spent 0.01% of revenue, and in return they got to buy what IP assets I had in bankruptcy court. Wow, that is messed up.

So let's rewind. Not getting a patent was a big mistake clearly. So let's say I got a patent. Or not just say, since I have done this one too. Now the next company says "we want to license it". I agree to this and they then hire me to create an implementation of the licensed patent which will work with their product. Then, after this is done and working and they have sold it to clients at a huge profit, they fire me and tell me I have to transfer ownership of the patent to them if I want my job back. When I refuse they start creating legal problems for me that costs tens of thousands of dollars to deal with and take me out of the employment pool for a year, and after all that their company goes bankrupt, their IP is sold to a bigger company in bankruptcy court, and then THAT company (Fortune 100) re-patents the things I have already patented and serves me with a cease and desist.

So if I get a patent or don't get a patent, me, the guy inventing awesome new things that benefit humanity, is damned either way because of corporate abuse of the system.

The only answer is to stop innovating or to become a corporate parasite that steals things.

The problem in all this is not with the concept of patents or copyright but that the way it works in practice is to enable the powerful to squash small innovators who are actually doing useful stuff.