[URSpider94]

Patents were created because we believe that there’s a win-win to providing limited term protection for new inventions. There are fields, like IC design, where lack of IP protection would halt innovation pretty quickly - nobody is going to invest tens or hundreds of millions to build a new chip if a competitor can copy it in a matter of months.

That said, it’s a bargain made for the public good, and we should always keep that in mind. It’s pretty clear that there are abuses of the patent system, we need to think about how we can modify it to minimize those abuses while protecting valuable research.

[greglindahl]

I've only founded one startup that made a chip, and patents didn't help (or hinder) us at all.

Another example would be Intel: you're saying that Intel would stop designing chips if there were no more patents?

[ClassyJacket]

Nobody's saying to get rid of copyright, things as specific as a chip design could still be protected.