[nitrogen]

The alternative to patents is either less innovation (see countries with weak IP protection) or massive secrecy.

I think you'd be hard pressed to prove that weak IP protection leads to less innovation. I'd argue that it's equally as likely that the causation is reversed; that is, countries that do more innovating will eventually have stronger IP protection, whether the actual innovators want it or not.

Massive secrecy is the current state of things even with patents. Patent language rarely discloses any information that would be of use to a software developer. Software developers almost never read patents when implementing their own systems, with a few notable exceptions (such as the case where someone wants to implement a well-known patented algorithm).

[Steko]

I think it's trivial to say that weak IP protection would lead to less innovation with simple counterfactuals.

Let's go back a few years and remove all IP protections for media. Does Avatar still get a half billion dollar budget to get made?

"Massive secrecy is the current state of things even with patents. "

This is just arguing degrees. Whatever it's at now, I think the alternative is far more massive secrecy then currently.

[wbienek]

Your mixing ip protection with software patents. Avatar is protected by copyright. Nobody disputes the need for that. Even hardware patents are often fine. To "patent" the idea that (and this is one of many examples" ) you can buy something with only "one click" is silly. There are probably patents on filling list boxes, ordering checkboxes in thee columns, goofy crap like that. This is why HN people (many of them programmers like me abhor software patents. )

Patenting a specific very complex algorithm -specifically- might be ok, but general ideas are not.