> IP laws do not inherently restrict anyone from freely practicing their trade nor do they force you to join any trade/industry associations.

While true, it's a gray area when you get into certain industries. Cell phones, for example, are chock-full of cross licensed patents regarding the baseband chips and radio waves. There's a term in the industry for these kinds of patents (my mind is blanking). Ignoring the necessary industry talent, there's no way in hell one can make a new baseband processor without dozens of NDAs and patents that you yourself can offer up as leverage.

IMHO (and one many here share), IP laws (with regard to software) have gone way too far. The big problem is that the companies with the might to enact change tend to be part of the problem themselves.

How is this any different than saying "Cell phones are too complicated so lets just skip all that research for practical reasons?"

I agree that many patents are held by groups that don't use them how we'd like them to, but they still had to _buy_ the patent. Society promised them that the patent would be enforced and it is. Combating abuse of the courts is a separate matter.

Forging a trademark is bad because it's a deception, not a theft. Trademarks have nothing do do with piracy, they're about counterfeiting.

It's not forging. It's putting your own.

You spend twenty years designing the perfect steel production method, spending millions of dollars, and start selling it as Pessimizer Steel. It's obviously superior. You start making some of your money back. I spend an hour watching you through the window and start selling it as Super Steel and claiming that it's just as good because I made it the same way. I sell it at half price because I'm not paying off any business loans. You go bankrupt.

That's the system you want? Who is going to invest in steel research in that system?

That's not an argument about forging trademarks - it's an argument for respecting patents (if the Pessimizer manufacturers got one) or trade secrets (if they didn't).

You can make an argument for trademark law on the basis of sunk costs to develop an intangible brand with intrinsic value, as opposed to as a consumer protection mechanism, but this isn't that.

There was no mention of forging at all until you brought it up. Where did that come from?

"Similar" isn't "the same", but "similar".

In one case, you forbid everyone but the licensees to produce a certain type of nails. In another case, you forbid everyone but the guild members to produce nails at all.

Both are government-granted monopolies.