Take it to the extremes and you'll have problems with both cases. A lawless society is bad, but a society that lets people twist the letter of the law to their unfair or undeserved advantage is equally bad. In such a situation, a system designed to promote merit is abused to prevent those who deserve the merit from earning the rewards.

Case in point: patent abuse. The iPhone's vaunted suite of patents has failed to protect it from ridiculous infringement lawsuits. Thanks to Apple's success at apparently putting these patents together in one usable package, and marketing the product with great success, it's now forced to pay expensive legal fees to protect the gains stemming from their own hard work. Isn't it time to change the system, so that companies like Nokia aren't forced to announce patent victories through their PR machine?