Yes, I absolutely want to set that precedent: live and death situations are more important than IP rights. You can always sort that kind of stuff out after the fact ("turns out that was a valid patent, and you were licensing it for $X before this all happened, so looks like someone owes you $X and let's figure out who that is"), but you can't get back dead neighbors who were lost due to legal delays.

Weird things like software patents and ludicrously long copyrights aside, the notion of IP has worked out decently for us. There's no way it's more important than directly saving human lives though.