If there were no patents everyone would be busy working to implement ideas. Innovation would fly and the inequality index would drop like a rock. A lot of the wealth concentrated at megacorps in the form of IP would flow out to any who worked to actually implement ideas. Information cannot be stolen, it can only be copied. The literal definition of theft is to deprive someone of their property. That just doesn't apply to anything information based. There are several claimed intents but at its root it is an excuse to use violence against others to prevent competition, basically the one thing that shouldn't be allowed in civilization.