[everydayman]

You are assuming that ecommerce as it exists today would have happened without RSA (or DH). Maybe someone else would have created it, maybe not. Maybe someone else would have created something else to facilitate ecommerce, maybe not. Maybe we would never have created it and instead relied on some cumbersome form of symmetric cryptography (yuck). At the very minimum, ecommerce would have been delayed.

We need to ENCOURAGE investment into innovations. Without patents, investors hesitate investing into costly R&D which can be easily copied once seen.

Innovations of the 70's like asymmetric cryptography led us to Internet ecommerce which have led to the flourishing world of online startups which we today take for granted. It's all connected.

[harshreality]

I am not assuming that at all.

You think RSA (the inventors) would have kept RSA (the algorithm) secret, had they not been able to patent it? I think you're mistaken.

The history of software/algorithm patents is a history of technologies with limited adoption and/or interop problems until the patents expired. Patents are more likely to kill the future of a technology than to promote the technology.

[throwawaykf03]

By assuming RSA would be invented without patents, you are begging the question. Would R, S and A even be employed by MIT and given free reign to do their research if MIT was not assured of capturing the rewards of their innovation? I think you'll find there are a negligible a number of institutions who will invest in anything without prospects of getting returns on it, much less risky enterprises like research.

[everydayman]

now we see your next assumption is that investment into R&D happens without incentives. It doesn't.