@koakuma >I thought the process of granting patents require you to prove that the thing has never been published by someone else?
No it does not, especially in the USA - all you need to do is submit tortured enough legalize that covers a general idea for the US patent and most patent offices to grant a patent.

The US patent office is legally meant to check their own records and deny a patent if there is prior art, but they have had the habit of not even checking their own records since the 1980s - for example the LZW algorithm was patented twice, with the first patent on LZW filed in June 1, 1983 and the second patent on LZW filed in June 20, 1983 - the US patent office approved both; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lzw?useskin=monobook#Patents (such algorithm was published in a mathematical paper before being patented).

Previously US patents were first to invent and so if you could find and submit examples of prior art published before the patent file date, that would likely be a successful defense against patent extortion.

But the USA then changed to first to patent, which means that even if a defense submitted a mountain of prior art and and it was obvious that the business saw the prior art and decided to patent that - the defense may not be successful.

Patents only apply to the country those are filed in, meaning that originally such legalized extortion only applied to the USA - but of course the USA has processed to legislatively colonize the world to have similar laws (of course not limited to patents) to them (i.e. unless you change patent laws to suit more extortion via patents and extend your copyright period to be at lest 70 years after the author's death and a bunch more, we're going to sanction you).

It's only big businesses that win with patents - small businesses and individuals always lose.

IBM has so many patents that they almost always win the patent expensive extortion lottery.

IBM often gones to smaller businesses with a list of patents and demands millions and if the targeted for extortion business looks at the patents and works out that none of them apply - IBM simply states that they can go back and get more and the smaller business usually ends up paying.

IBM also always wins if a business that does anything tries to extort them with a patent - as IBM goes; "that's cute, but we have this patent and this patent and this patent that applies to your business practices - why don't we cross license?" - IBM gains yes another patent (IBM regards this benefit of its massive patent pool as 10x more valuable than the direct profits from that pool).

The only time IBM ever loses is when occasionally a non-practicing entity sues with patents (as those only do but litigation, and patents do not apply to techniques for writing a threatening patent extortion letter, techniques for maliciously filing a legal case, or convincing a court to grant a wanted ruling) - IBM writes that cost off as the cost of doing business as it's smaller than the amount of money extorted.

>there's a way to get libre software while completely avoiding the mess that is copyright and IP laws
Imaginary property does not exist; https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html

Unfortunately, thanks to governments, software is proprietary unless it's released under a free license.

It would require overthrowing the US government and then the governments of other countries to make it so that software with the source code included is free software.