Yes. For no freedom can exist without paradoxical rules. Pertinent rules needed in all market-constructs to protect the trust in the marketplace. Hence, those rules could certainly include patents.
Which is quite a different question than the inverse; do we need patents to promote free-markets?
The latter I answer with a resounding no. But when we create market constructs in violation of the most rudimentary principles of freedom (whilst calling them free) patents have become one of the desperate mechanisms at the under-belly of freedom.
Freedom must become relativity theory, away from its stifling absolutism of today to eradicate some of the malformed constructs of our past.
