>It seems like IP exists to empower corporations to monopolize segments of the market.

It only started to "seem" that way in 2008 or so when Google-- a large corporation that wants to monopolize a segment of the market- started a propaganda campaign against Apple to try and rationalize ripping off the iPhone with android.

>Does anyone actually believe it's to empower consumers?

The really unfortunate thing about this propaganda campaign is that it has been so successful that it has gotten people to close their minds off to not only other viewpoints, but the very nature of the system.

Patents allow the advancement of science to occur more rapidly by incentivizing disclosure. When someone invents something really new, they could keep it a secret and have a monopoly on that product for as long as it takes their competitors to figure out how to do it-- which is often many years. The patent system gets them to reveal it so that the competitors can start with the state of the art, and then extend it.

Google, et. al. want to perverse this system by, instead of extending the state of the art, simply copying the state of the art and then hoping to get away with it in court. To provide cover they've got legions of people clamoring that "patents are "bad" and stuff like that".

The reality is, getting a patent is not unreasonably difficult. Thus small startups (like google once was) can patent their technologies (like google once did for page rank) and get protection from major existing players (like google once needed from Yahoo, Inktomi, Alta Vista, Wired Search, etc).... and leverage that protection into investment from Venture Capitalists (like google did.)

If you have any question about googles hypocrisy, note that they only say patents are bad when it comes to other people's patents-- they viciously protect PageRank and they sued Apple with motorola patents they acquired for that specific purpose... and are trying to reneg on their agreement to license patents under FRAND terms in order to get leverage to force Apple to license its patents.

Patents do empower consumers, when the system works- when companies abide by the rules and use them to get a leg up in advancing technology.

We are not all on the same page, though HN may seem like a monoculture because there are a lot of Apple haters here. But if you look at these discussions you'll notice they are generally uninformed about the history (eg: bringing up Xerox) and don't even know what patents are (eg: confusing design and utility patents, thinking 2001 or Star Trek are "prior art" or citing the LG Prada, or claiming Apple is claiming a patent on rounded corners.)

One thing you'll never see an anti-IP person do, in my experience, is consider the ramifications of getting rid of all patent laws.

For instnace, consider how locked down devices would be when there was no such protection. Companies would hermetically seal devices to make it difficult for competitors to get inside them to understand how they work-- this would be bad for consumers.

Plus progress would be retarded. Most drugs that have been invented never would have been, and technology progress would be much, much slower.

It's popular to hate patents, and that position comes from taking for granted the benefits patents have provided, and focusing on perceived (and hypocritical in my opinion) problems with them.

Due to the contentious nature of this position, and the fact that every time I've expressed it on HN, I've been personally attacked, this will be my one comment on this subject, Sorry. Your question seems genuine, so I took the time to respond.