It's fair to ask if it's bad for there to be an official form of anti-competition, but call a spade a spade.
The argument here is that the only ones that should benefit from this are the authors and inventors, and they and only they are granted "exclusive" rights. No one else. In fact, I'd find that fair. The implication being you can't sell or transfer those rights to someone, and those rights are only granted to the authors and inventors.
Which leads us to this question:
"exactly how is it anti-competitive to disallow other companies to use the said patents unless they agree to pay for the rights?"
It's not, as long as the one doing the license is the author or inventor. One should not be able to transfer those rights to a third party, as it's explicitly an exclusive right.
> ... gives Congress the power "[t]o promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;" (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8).
From what I read based on what some legal experts simplified but again, "it's the Internet" but basically, they considered patents as legal rights to monopolize on such innovations.
So, based on that, exactly how is it anti-competitive to disallow other companies to use the said patents unless they agree to pay for the rights?