Comment by 0x44

If the resulting synthesis is something new, why wouldn't we want to protect it legally? To make a literary analogy, any book written in an established genre necessarily synthesizes work that went before it… are these new works less worthy of legal protection because the ideas and tropes (and in the case of works synthesized from the Commons characters, setting, etc.) are things we've already seen? In the technology fields, it is common to base new innovation on that which came before. So long as the prior art is referenced in the claim for protection, aren't the useful arts strengthened by legal protection in exchange for continued disclosure of innovation, even in the case of innovations synthesized of prior development?