'the cartel was only possible because of a government created monopoly'? Absurd on its face, as the cartel participants were not all licensees of the same patent.
It's implicit in your singular use of the term monopoly, implying a lack of competition. A patent gives you the exclusive right to manufacture something for a period, but it doesn't protect against competition from people with patents of their own serving the same market. Issuance of patents does not lead inevitably to the existence of cartels as you are suggesting.
You misunderstand. The cartel held a monopoly. The cartel comprised of multiple companies with multiple patents. However you want to phrase the end result, the cartel could only keep out competition under the legal threat the patents provided. Eventually competition was able to come in and break up the cartel, but without the legal monopoly provided through the patents, the cartel would have never lasted as long.
