Actually, the point he's making is the one, admittedly narrow, aspect where patents and copyrights overlap, LG.
The method or technique for making, say gnocchi, is extremely easy to duplicate from one person to another. Write it down and post it on the internet and the whole world's making gnocchi. But if Luigi has a patent on gnocchi, then others have to get his permission to make it the same way.
The patent doesn't protect the
thing itself, it protects the intellectual property of how the thing is
made.
In the case of copyrighted works such as a book, the
story is the
thing and the physical book is just packaging (which is, of course, why e-books are even possible). The design of say, a turbine, on the other hand, is something that someone else with the necessary skills can look at and say, "yeah, I can build that."
The spark of coming up with the how in the first place is what's protected by the patent. What the patent does is prohibit others from doing the same thing in the same way for a period of time. They can come up with a different way to do the same thing, but if they do it the same way (even if they came up with it on their own) they infringe the patent (which is why patent searches are such a pain in the sitter-downer).
That may be part of why so many folks confuse patents and copyrights.
