@4 & @6

We also "own" government facilities (power plants, armed forces bases, etc.), yet there are only extremely limited circumstances where Joe Public can use them; I believe it's generally agreed that for the most part that's a good idea. Whether you like the idea of the government restricting use of laws it has copyrighted or not, the government restricting access to publicly-owned property is nothing new.

It would be also useful if you provided more information about what follows after a DMCA takedown notice is provided. By law, you have to take it down and notify the purported offender in writing, but it would be nice to provide (1) what the mode of taking down means (is the article removed entirely? redacted? left with placeholders where the IP-at-issue is?), (2) an easy way of providing counter-notice, perhaps even an online form (that could then be printed and sent to comply with the "written notice" part of the statues).

Though I suppose you don't get many of these, it would be excellent to serve as an example of how to do this (as) right (as possible), including having a page listing DMCA takedown actions, their statuses and resolutions for transparency's sake.

Wrt #10, what's even better is that the Cairene apartments will often be finished in radically different styles from the outside. The (semi-)finished buildings look like a hodgepodge of design choices.

As for "rotting", I'm not sure I'd characterize bare concrete structures as such. At worst, the exposed rebar will rust. They'd be able to finish work on these structures if they so desired.

#14 & #18 seem to have it right: Think like a bean counter. What would it cost to violate the patent for a single instance? Even if you were unwilling to mount a legal defense, you would only incur triple damages and would desist (i.e., no longer use the patent). But by then, the damage would already be done, i.e., the satellite would already have been put into a (more) correct orbit and desisting would be free. They're simply looking at the bottom line of costs vs. benefits and determining what the best return is.

To play devil's advocate, you're only going to become a target for patent lawsuits if you have a pocketbook worth defending. Your average Joe writing code and starting a small business isn't going to be sued by patent holders, for the price tag reasons mentioned by #14. It's only when you're making enough money to make it worthwhile (or when you sue someone else for violating your own patent) that you should expect (counter)suits, and by then, you should, as a cost of doing business, have a legal team and a policy about how to handle (cross)licensing.

What I think it boils down to is that the patent system has ingrained issues and limitations that are especially exposed by software patents. Unlike the engine from #2's comments (rather than the plans), it is relatively easy and inexpensive to reproduce computer systems, which puts the tools used to "fiddle" out a new process into the hands of a great many more people. It's also easier to compose software technologies, so the quality of "obvious to try" increases with software. Furthermore, the descriptions in patents are far from easy to determine whether it applies to your in-parallel invention -- the proliferation of software patents has made the amount of work required to review so large as to be intractable, not simply because there are more patents to review but because the governing body is not capable of policing submissions sufficiently for identity, overlap, and ambiguity, and thus the quality of patents has decreased in the software realm.

Patent "griefers," who keep their patents for the sole purpose of preventing others from taking advantage of the use of the underlying art or science, while limiting the boon that the patents can give in the short term, still improve the public domain upon termination of the patent, at least insofar as the patent's description is worthwhile.

There is still one bastion for those fans of monopoly of ideas: the trade secret. Unfortunately, in the software realm, those secrets are nigh useless -- either they remain in the heads of the developer, or, if applied, are instantly exposed to reverse-engineering, and directly proportional to their perceived value will they be researched and duplicated. Eliminating software patents will probably leave very little protection to the one-person developer, and will stifle their idea production, save where they were willing to give it into the public domain anyway. (Let's hope they have a day job or patron.)

Whatever overhaul of patents happen, it must give incentive for people to publicize (ideally useful) ideas, while not hampering the efforts of the remaining populace to create in-parallel. #15's freedom to further invent can get stuck when your livelihood is jeapardy due to patent lawsuit; your family's next meal might be more important. Greater requirements of specificity, greater bar of inobviousness, especially around composition of previously-existing work, probably can help the system.

One thought experiment: If a patent application was held for a term (perhaps a year) before being released, and several other applicants came up with the same idea in parallel, then a co-patent (optionally with the first applicant getting some special rights) might be introduced -- a shorter lived patent-in-common. Not sure how licensing issues would be arranged.