[dylan604]

> Without this system, the only way to safeguard a technological advantage would be to keep it secret. Inventors would be incentivized to maintain maximum secrecy for all new inventions. That would be bad for society, and inconvenient for inventors.

And in today's world where reversing a product is pretty much a guarantee if the product is something anyone wants, the secret won't be kept for too long. (shhh, everyone's secret sauce is pretty much thousand island) Once the secret is out, anyone that wants to will copy it and now there's no protection.

[bloppe]

Ya, clearly patents are a good deal for inventors. I just think a lot of people fail to realize that it's also a good deal for society.

Without patents, who knows how many ideas would be stuck in the heads of individual people, reluctant not only to try to bring them to market, but to even discuss them with anybody. Why would anybody want to become an inventor, if there were so little upside?

[FpUser]

It is becoming harder and harder for an individual to file for and protect the patent due to costs involved.

[dylan604]

to be fair, it's harder and harder to come up with an idea first. there's a lot of patents that have to be researched to see if your idea is first or just a first^Nth person to have the idea. that's a definite specialty skill and even then they're not perfect