Technology has come a long, long, long, long, LONG way since then.
If you disagree with that statement, then we have nothing further to talk about because I have learned it is a waste of time to discuss anything with dishonest people.
Human nature has not changed much, but technology now pervades everything we do.
Maybe innovation needed to be protected from competition in the days of the founding fathers, and maybe it didn't. Maybe "intellectual property" laws were just another obstacle that the American spirit overcame.
It is now possible to patent mathematical algorithms.
How far do you think the world would have progressed if Pythagoras had been able to patent his Theorem and collect royalties in perpetuity anytime geometry was used to solve an engineering problem?
The paperwork alone would have ground everything to a halt, much as keeping track of Microsoft licenses is a nightmare in a company with a few thousand PCs.
The ability to dispense with the expensive process of tracking licenses is going to move a lot of companies to open source in the next few years. It's already happening.
The people you would like to enslave with IP laws will find a way around them whether you like it or not. It's a derivative of one of the basic laws of thermodynamics.
That's a rather poor example, because patents are not and never have been issued in perpetuity (at least not in the US - I can't speak for ancient Greece).
The whole rationale behind granting of patents is that there is an explicitly-stated trade, which is intended to benefit both parties, the inventor(s) and the public - the "founders" clearly understood that, and the passage of time has not invalidated that understanding. The inventor gets an exclusive, for a limited period of time, during which time he can prevent others from using the patented material. In return for that, the inventor must fully disclose the invention to the public. So, after a period of time goes by, the invention is in the public domain. That's very different from locking something up in perpetuity.
Copyright is quite a bit longer, but copyright laws are entirely different from patent laws.
My objection to the Eolas patent is that it was wrongly granted - there is prior art which should have invalidated it and prevented it from issuing in the first place. I suspect that another round or two in court will settle things. I also suspect that Eolas believes that to be the case as well, and so they are going to try very hard to milk it for hundreds of millions of dollars as soon as possible, in the hopes that they can grab a windfall before their patent is invalidated and it becomes worthless. Not all that different from the "take the money and run" philosophy behind the SCO-Linux dustup. IMHO it's only a matter of time before both of them get their comeuppance.