This is manifestly false, unless your definition of "civilization"
includes it, in which case it is tautological. China, Pakistan, and
several other countries have no such concepts, and no need of them.
The United States had no such laws before the USPTO was created.
The very concept itself is a denial of the individual rights you
seek to protect: an individual who has acquired some knowledge by
legal non-coercive means has the right to use whatever knowledge he
has to further his life's goals without coercive interference from
the state on behalf of some other claimant to a monopoly on that
knowledge. Patents and Copyrights are coercive monopolies, not
properties (trademarks, in contrast, /are/ properties because their
use by non-owners constitutes making a fraudulent substantive claim).
The policies you advocate here are no more justified than any other
government interference, and what's worse, they give a justification
that sounds libertarian in principle while stabbing true liberty in
the back. Those who wish to protect their intellectual discoveries
must do so themselves with contracts, technologies, and other non-
coercive means, not beg the state to do it for them at gunpoint.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html>