Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

I am trying to decide if this metaphor is better than my light bulb/LED example. At any rate, this is a great open letter at K5:

Most authors do not write bold avant garde novels. They work to find their own distinctive voice within established genres. Is the work of J.K. Rowling diminished by the debt she owes to J.R.R. Tolkien or Thomas Hughes? No. She has taken ingredients from the best of her predecessors, added her own special magic and created something that is wholly her own [The Inspiration for Harry Potter].

Now imagine a literary world restricted by patents. A patent protects not just the work itself, but the idea behind the work.

Arthur Conan Doyle's patent on detective fiction would have expired long ago, but not before preventing Agatha Christie's career. C.S. Lewis' patent on the fantasy novel would have discouraged Tolkien's already reluctant publishers. Without this inspiration, the fantasy trilogies that fill an entire wall in every bookshop would never have been written.

Today we would have patents on smaller and smaller points of style or story. Every opening scene, every surprise ending, every combination of characters, every imaginative sex scene would be protected by a patent.

How could any budding author know what story ideas were already 'owned'? No one could expect him to have read every novel published in the previous 25 years! His profession would have become a minefield. Every day he would fear some lawyer 'discovering' that the hero of his latest story was actually covered by a patent owned by an author he'd never heard of, from a book he'd never read.