"But there is no way in hell you can convince me that it’s beneficial for society to not share ideas." Sorry, but Notch has it backwards. Patents are designed

"But there is no way in hell you can convince me that it’s beneficial for society to not share ideas." Sorry, but Notch has it backwards. Patents are designed to for sharing - not for preventing sharing. (Patent holder shares information on how they implemented something in exchange for being granted temporary rights to deliver on the method implementation.) I know I'm being naively simplistic in that statement. Yet so is Notch in his analogy. I've found no one who claims that "it's beneficial for society to not share ideas". Setting up a straw man makes for juicy debate, but not great argument.