Communication Ethics book part for It's Even Worse Then That. (This is an automatically generated summary to avoid having huge posts on this page. Click through to read this post.)

If someone was foolish enough to grant a patent on the Mona Lisa, it would not have a great impact on society in general; it's only one painting and it's not ever going to be repeated accidentally. For those who would reproduce it deliberately (traditionally called "forgery") patent laws won't stop them anyhow. The Mona Lisa is phenomenally complicated, including all kinds of little details and hidden layers of paint. But that's not really comparable to the kind of patents the Patent Office is granting.