1. Society defines what is property and who has rights. This can change at any time. That is, there is no absolute notion of "property".
Not too far back humans were property. Some would say the abolition of that notion of property is a principle the United States was built upon.
2. Software is different from other patentable ideas. It completely fails the non-obviousness test. That is, people can easily independently develop or use ideas as part of their own creation since at core it is just mathematics applied to a problem domain. This is similar to the underlying reason why (pure) business processes are not in general patentable outside the U.S.
3. There is no corollary to other social systems, at least not the for derivative health metaphor that you made. You cannot give up something (wealth) that you never "owned" in the first place. Further, anyone can fall sick or be hurt at any time for any reason, regardless of wealth or circumstance. So, there is always a social cost come what may. Whereas, you have to create an idea and choose to follow it.
Innovation is an "option" and therefore easily blocked. This was an objective reason for having a patent system in the first place (whether it has succeeded in that is a different question all together).
You cannot even argue software patents are the most efficient enablers of innovation since some of the most innovative and useful software known to exist either easily predates software patents or were explicitly made available for free (many even while software patentability was available) and never encumbered at any point.
TL;DR. It is only a question property and rights if a society deems it. It does not have to be this way. As easily evidenced by lack of software or business process patents for most of the rest of the world...
1. Society defines what is property and who has rights. This can change at any time. That is, there is no absolute notion of "property".
Not too far back humans were property. Some would say the abolition of that notion of property is a principle the United States was built upon.
2. Software is different from other patentable ideas. It completely fails the non-obviousness test. That is, people can easily independently develop or use ideas as part of their own creation since at core it is just mathematics applied to a problem domain. This is similar to the underlying reason why (pure) business processes are not in general patentable outside the U.S.
3. There is no corollary to other social systems, at least not the for derivative health metaphor that you made. You cannot give up something (wealth) that you never "owned" in the first place. Further, anyone can fall sick or be hurt at any time for any reason, regardless of wealth or circumstance. So, there is always a social cost come what may. Whereas, you have to create an idea and choose to follow it.
Innovation is an "option" and therefore easily blocked. This was an objective reason for having a patent system in the first place (whether it has succeeded in that is a different question all together).
You cannot even argue software patents are the most efficient enablers of innovation since some of the most innovative and useful software known to exist either easily predates software patents or were explicitly made available for free (many even while software patentability was available) and never encumbered at any point.
TL;DR. It is only a question property and rights if a society deems it. It does not have to be this way. As easily evidenced by lack of software or business process patents for most of the rest of the world...