He then does a riff on what would have happened if Newton had got a software patent on calculus. He would have sat on the patent "until Leibniz published his superior method and then sued the pants off anyone who tried to take a derivative without coughing up a hefty license fee."
Yglesias manages to get in other digs over what is currently patentable and the likely lower quality of today's patents. He concludes by noting patents do not create "property' but rather are a regulation which creates a monopoly.
Read it. It is nice to have such a good writer on our side.