I don't think people should be able to patent ideas. They should be able to patent products. If someone writes a free flash from scratch.. adobe shouldn't be able to sue them for that. Even if it is compatible with Adobe's flash.

Ideas should be free for anyone to use and expand upon.. making them better and better.

Take the multi-touch for example... I do not think anyone should be able to hold a patent on simply "multi-touch".

They can patent the iphone itself.. the product itself.. and if anyone makes an identical iphone and sticks their name on it.. THEN go after them.. but just because a different phone happens to have multi-touch as well shouldn't be illegal.

Bnetd was written completely from scratch in my understanding.. If the code was stolen or directly copied from blizzard that would be one thing: But a complete, personal write of a code from those developers should not be illegal.

People should be able to code whatever they want.

Sometimes.. there is only 1 way to code something.. and also some code is freely published and available in books, websites, etc.. so SOME of the source code may look similar to blizzards... but there should be some kind of limit.. Source code must match X% in order to be called infringement of anything.

Monopolizing ideas is a bad idea that the US seems to have latched onto.