Yes
Patents stifle, not creativity, but innovation (which I'm sure you meant).
We argue that when innovation is
“sequential” (so that each successive
invention builds in an essential way
on its predecessors) and
“complementary” (so that each
potential innovator takes a different
research line), patent protection is
not as useful for encouraging
innovation as in a static setting.
Indeed, society and even inventors
themselves may be better off without
such protection. Furthermore, an
inventor's prospective profit may
actually be enhanced by competition
and imitation.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1756-2171.2009.00081.x/full
And not only in software.
However, the recent proliferation of
intellectual property rights in
biomedical research suggests a
different tragedy, an “anticommons” in
which people underuse scarce resources
because too many owners can block each
other. Privatization of biomedical
research must be more carefully
deployed to sustain both upstream
research and downstream product
development. Otherwise, more
intellectual property rights may lead
paradoxically to fewer useful products
for improving human health.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/280/5364/698.short
And finally, Bill Gates:
If people had understood how patents
would be granted when most of today’s
ideas were invented and had taken out
patents, the industry would be at a
complete stand-still today. The
solution . . . is patent exchanges . .
. and patenting as much as we can. . .
. A future start-up with no patents of
its own will be forced to pay whatever
price the giants choose to impose.
That price might be high: Established
companies have an interest in
excluding future competitors.
Fred Warshofsky, The Patent Wars 170-71 (NY: Wiley 1994).
