Personally, I think Jefferson's take on patents illuminates this subject pretty well:
It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body.
http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letter...
The thing is, there are good arguments for many aspects of patents, copyright and trademarks, however to try and establish them under the banner of Intellectual Property is both inaccurate and damaging.
In the long run, the pushing of IP is to the level that a Google search for "Mickey Mouse Law" lists the first result as the Copyright Extension Act https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=mickey+mouse+law is the factor that might lead to laws being dialled back so far that patronage will be the only option.
The reformists are the IP industries only real hope at this point, because if they are not paid attention to, then the abolitionists will win the argument.