[spacebanana7]

Intellectual property in the form of trademarks is generally good for consumers, you don't want a new database product to be called Postgres despite no association with the developers of PostgreSQL.

Intellectual property in the form of patents and copyrights is often harmful for consumers. In music, academia and mechanical engineering it's clearly been harmful in slowing the spread of innovation. It sucks to wait 20 years for a new excellent new dishwasher tray shape.