Every single owner of intellectual property is a monopolist. The government grants them a monopoly on the information for a number of years. Patents are somewh

Every single owner of intellectual property is a monopolist. The government grants them a monopoly on the information for a number of years. Patents are somewhat tolerable monopolies: they tend to last only a quarter of our lifetimes. Once they expire, the information is freed from their "ownership". Nintendo didn't build their fortunes on patents, though. They built it on copyrights. You and I will likely be long dead before those works enter the public domain. If they ever do.