Patents as Protectionism

"Now, if my calculations are correct, when this baby hits eighty eight miles per hour, you're going to see some serious shit!"
--Dr Emmit Brown (Back to the Future)

The argument for protecting emerging industries with tariffs, subsidies, et al is to shield innovative nascent sectors from competitive forces. Nonsense, respond the free traders, this just a form of protectionism. Competition, not lack of it, is what spurs innovation and productivity improvement.

Yet many of those same 'free traders' support the patent system. Patents are necessary, so goes the argument, to provide incentives for innovators to innovate.

But don't patents essentially serve the same purpose as protectionist trade barriers? Patents shield inventions from competition by essentially granting patent holders legal monopolies over production of patented items. Trade barriers act in a similar fashion as they increase the monopoly position of protected industries in domestic markets.

In both cases, prices rise and quantities fall. Consequently, prosperity is restrained.

Innovation is motivated by profit (broadly defined) possibilities, not profit guarantees.