(I could close with that bald assertion, but I won't.) Its basic thrust is that the patent system is "broken" to the extent that it does what it's designed to do: grant to an inventor a time-limited privilege to restrict his competitors so that he can earn monopoly profits that will reward him for his invention.

The book opens with the story of James Watt. Watt made a series of improvements to the design of a steam engine and obtained a patent, which he used to interfere with his competition. In particular, he used the legal system to crush Jonathan Hornblower and his superior engine design; the rest of his competitors had made further improvements, but simply waited for Watt's patent to expire (which had been extended to a 32-year period) before putting them into production. Watt himself was forced to use a technically inferior design element in his engines for some years to avoid infringing on someone else's patent. When Watt's patents finally expired and his competitors could freely enter the market, the number of steam engines being produced and the rate at which their efficiency improved both exploded; furthermore, Watt's company continued to increase production and make a profit for years despite the disappearance of the patent protection.

It seems clear that the overall effect of Watt's patent protection was to greatly slow down both the development and the wide-scale adoption of improved steam engines--and, as a footnote, that it may not even have been necessary to ensure that Watt made a profit. Note that Watt was using the patent system exactly as it had been intended. In the book, we see this happening over and over in detail and across a wide range of industries.

Even if our courts were up to it, and we see time and hand again that they are not, you simply cannot consistently enforce incoherent laws.

All IP laws other than trademark are harmful to society and the economy and need to be abolished.