That's an interesting read, and I just found this on reddit: http://www.moongadget.com/origins/dune.html

To take a quote from your source: "Every writer owes a similar debt to those who have come before." - this is something I believe speaks more to the core of software development than the patent system we use today.

Terry Brooks' supposed imitation of The Lord of The Rings didn't stop it from generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

I actually support the idea that Terry Brooks should be able to reskin The Lord of the Rings if he feels like it. I bridle a bit at the label "supposed imitation", though. Read them both -- they're exact copies. Even those parts of LotR that are utterly irrelevant to anything are faithfully duplicated in Sword of Shannara.