Are intellectual property (IP) rights too strong?

Intellectual property rights have been in the news recently. A recent supreme court case made it more difficult to obtain and defend patents. The court felt too many patents were being given for marginal improvements that would occur in the natural course of business, saying patents are to be reserved for true innovation of the "non-obvious" type. Here's a more detailed article from the Economist.

I was peaked to write this post when I stumbled upon this academic paper that talks about how James Watt's steam engine patent obtained in 1768 seemed to retard industrial developement for years until it finally expired in 1800 immediately allowing far superior engines to come on the market. The first 4 pages of the paper discuss the story of the steam engine so you don't have to read the whole thing. Here's the link to the whole paper if you like.

The general idea is that having intellectual property rights that are too strong retards economic growth and stifles innovation rather than encouraging it.