The interesting thing about intellectual property is that it doesn’t fit the normal paradigm of capitalism and trade. The old mechanism of “I give you access to something, and it is no longer mine” doesn’t exactly apply to intellectual property. Instead, we try to apply the mechanism that we are used to into this new realm of intellectual property.
In reality, the only reason why we create such a system for intellectual property is to keep the incentive there for invention. “If I invent a new type of capacitor, I can make money off of the patent” is the train of thought. However, in surprisingly many cases, the draw of creating something new and fine-tuning it itself overshadows the profit motive. There is a surprisingly large sea of open-source software (Linux, Firefox, Minecraft…) in which the entire source code is available online for free. Economics as we know it can’t possibly explain how millions of users log hundreds of hours each tweaking and refining Linux, for no pay! Is the power of innovation itself more powerful than profit incentive? It looks like: maybe, in some cases.