The idea behind patents is to enable one who invests the effort and
money to develop an idea to have exclusive use of it and fairly
profit from his labor and investment for a limited time. This is
granted in exchange for "teaching" the idea in the patent so it's
available to all after the period of exclusivity has expired.
Inventors are thus encouraged to innovate and disclose for the
long-term public benefit by having a chance to exclusively profit from
their work for a fixed period.


Sure, in theory, but the distinction between allowing someone to "fairly
profit" and granting a license to gouge is more than a little subjective.
Again, people were innovating long before the advent of intellectual property
as a concept--they entered the market and took their chances while others were
free to improve upon the design. If you absolutely insist on injecting
government into the process, why not simply legislate a "reasonable" (i.e.,
low) maximum licensing duty and allow all willing to pay the license to the
inventor to produce the product? This would still be artificial and
anticompetetive, but it would also still grant some exclusive profit to
inventors and, I think, decrease overal cost and time to market for most
products and services.