Business Idea and intellectual "property" - but can you own a meme?

You know sometimes XKCD just gets it so right. One of the really annoying  things is having a "Business Idea" that doesn't actually go the way you wanted.  But the reality is, that if you really were good enough to make that business work you would have done it already. This is not a reality that we want to hear very often. To illustrate, there is an accurate but confusing line in the the new movie The Social Network where "If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd've invented Facebook."


More importantly the real answer to this problem is given in the movie a bit latter.  Larry Summers, The VC of Harvard states that they should "just go and find another idea." But let's face it, even the Harvard Business Review magazine this month admits that's much harder to do. Worst of all, most people and most businesses are lazy.


There is something attractive to this concept that you can just come up with a some magical idea, do no work and then sue people who "steal" it from you. I fear that this concept no more solid a ground on which to base a economic society than the Vikings plundering wealth.  Why? Because the Vikings would have justified a society of plunder on the basis of might it right.  This capitalist world is based on the assumption that legal might and first to the patent office is right. Not effort is right, and not success.


Again, I am a potential author who wants to walk the middle way.  I love Linux, the Creative Commons, and Wikipedia.  I also want to get rich here too. But it seems I have to pick one.


On a side note, I see that Microsoft is also find it self at the wrong end of the endless web of who sues who.