[rixed]

> Lots of things become easy to replicate after they've been done once, despite being non-obvious before

Maybe, but this is not why we have patents. Patents justification is to help innovations to spread, by making them public and, in exchange, granting a monopoly for some time as would have been the case should the innovation been kept secret.

Patents are not, in theory, a bonus for whoever implement something first.

In practice though, this seems to be largely the case, at least in software, that patents are like those mine field maps during the gold rushes, partitioning the hills and delimiting every tiny area belonging to one miner, probably to police what would otherwise be a violent, perpetual quarrel.

[delazeur]

> Maybe, but this is not why we have patents.

Yeah, and? I wasn't saying so.