Patents and Copyrights occupy a weird in-between in that they act both as a reward for discovering an innovation and an exclusive, finite, monopoly privilege to control a particular innovation. Rewarding innovation is good since it means encouraging people to not just innovate, but to publicize them instead of keeping them as secret for something like a competitive advantage. But granting a monopoly at least in the way we do it tends to be bad since it helps create market domination and allows IP owners to charge way above competitive prices (EDIT: I used “above cost” before this but that’s not accurate to the monopoly problem, thank you to the commenters who pointed it out) without fear of being undercut by the market, and monopolizing an idea can stifle further innovations that rely on it.

Georgists since the time of George himself have argued against the monopoly side of patents and copyrights, and while George only argued against patents those after him have extended it further to copyrights. Georgists have proposed a variety of ways to deal with this, like replacing IP with an innovation prize model, or implementing a Harberger tax on IP (with modifications like compulsory licensing to make something like a Harberger-lease system), and plenty more.

Rewarding innovation as we do it now has an interesting duality to it that needs care when dealt with. We should at least make sure those who innovate are willing to give knowledge of that innovation to the public, without giving them so much monopoly power that the public ultimately suffers from it.