[yojimbo311]

I wound up nearly writing a book in response to this so I'll try to sum it up.

I agree with most of what you've said in this thread, but...

> Why have a centralized legal roadblock to new product development?

Rephrased: Why have a centralized catalog of discoveries and inventions available to the public that afford the contributors temporary exclusive license?

The idea behind patents was to counter very real problems created by the failure of markets to balance out the incentive to invent and innovate with the incentive to make those discoveries publicly available so they can inspire or cornerstone further discoveries. If they weren't published they were hoarded as trade secrets and were at risk of being lost forever over time.

Did the inception of patents account for or even acknowledge the kind of market control they're being used and traded for today? The lauded free market has turned patents into a commodity, possibly by expectation, but it's clear that this activity is relatively recent and seems to me due to changes in how the scope of their exclusive license grants is being interpreted/abused. Would we be better off assuming that the publication of discoveries would lead to closely aligned derivative products that would create a competitive environment or should we be generous with the licenses granted "inventors" so there's greater incentive to share those inventions?

Personally I think we're just seeing the beginning of what effects doing the later can have.