I will answer your rhetorical question to the best of my ability with the understanding that you will decline to reply, as is your choice.
FWIW
From my reading, it seemed to me that the phrase in that source (probably written by a non lawyer) is intended to describe how patent law was manipulated and misused by the greedsters from the very beginnings of our republic, with people’s discoveries being “hijacked” by more powerful/moneyed people who could manipulate the laws to their own benefit and screw the ones who in fact came up with whatever the invention was.
I think the writer made a case for this unjust practice occurring at various times in our history, and I am convinced we see this practice today.
On a similar line to patents is the build out of very large projects. The market for publicly traded companies is such that the base is often set up, or eventually borrowed against in such a way that the project is funded and built out by a huge number of citizen investors.
The numbers often suck for the build out and return for the corporate principles...BUT if it goes bankrupt and the assets are sold for pennies on the dollar the resultant holders make a mint because all of the fixed costs have been passed off as a broad investor loss.
A lot of the cable and telco modernizations and build outs were like this. Railroads in the past were similar and many mines for that matter.