Patents are broken in implementation, not as a concept.
The alternative to patents is not "all information wants to be free", it's paranoid secrecy. If people are to invest in R&D, they need protection from copycats. I mean, check this out: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/business/07muffin.html
The other alternative is that people get along with openness just fine. Beside, people don't have an inherent right to a technological secret, at least in the normal cases.
The point of patents is, if you discover a method of doing something, you patent it, and if anyone wants to use your process, they pay you to license it. So we provide a mechanism - but not the guarantee, since no-one might be interested - for a return on an investment into R&D.
Do you really, honestly believe that a drug company would research a new drug, spend a decade shepherding it through clinical trials and FDA approval (we are talking an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars) and then a generic manufacturer sells it for a little over the price of the raw materials, having gotten all the hard work done for them for free?
Because even if they wanted to they couldn't; they'd be bankrupt.
That is not the point of the patent system, that is the means by which the actual goal is obtained. The goal of the patent system is make the information public so all of mankind can benefit from it and the knowledge doesn't die with the inventor. Buying off the inventor with a limited monopoly on the idea is merely a means to an end.
If you have a mechanism other than patents that makes it economically possible for private organizations to engage in capital-intensive R&D and make the information public, let's hear it.
I have made no such claim. In any case, producing in the first place will cost an order of magnitude more than copying. However, this seem to be of little hindrance in the observations that I been able to make over the years.
> "Some bakery experts were skeptical about Bimbo’s claims of top-secret processes, saying the mythology surrounding Thomas’ muffins was more about smart product branding than proprietary baking. The basic techniques for making an English muffin were widely known, they said: English muffin dough is very watery and when it is cooked at high heat the water evaporates quickly and leaves large air pockets."
Hell, see any utopian idealistic system. The excuse is the implementation always fails. How many times does implementation have to fail before we start to question whether it is simply possible to implement it correctly and whether it's worth the cost and frustration in the first place?