[derbOac]

I haven't read this literature in awhile but there was a time when I was looking into it and it seemed that there was empirical evidence that if you really want to promote innovation via governmental means the way to do it is through competitions, basically like grant applications or xprize-type things.

The benefits from a patent-type system have to be compared to the alternative, which is where people innovate solely to stay ahead of market competitors and protect trade secrets. In that scenario, one might argue that there's a natural measure of innovation, the ease and speed with which a competitor can copy something or implement a competing product.

I'm not inherently opposed to patents but I do think their implementation today is extremely dysfunctional.