[loup-vaillant]

The question is not whether they are non trivial, and useful. The question is whether they (or something like they), would have existed at all.

Once granted, a patent give a benefit to the inventor, as well as a cost to society at large: monopoly. I think it is fair to say that the costs of monopoly always exceeds the benefits: you can't justify having the society as a whole pay such a cost for the benefit of a lone entity.

The only way to justify such a cost to society, is an equivalent benefit to society. If it turns out an invention would not have existed without the patent then the patent may not be that bad. But if would have existed anyway, then the patent is a net cost —bad.

Reading my sibling comments, it seems H.264 and MP3 patents were not instrumental in the coming of those technologies (efficient audio and video compression). Those technologies would have been invented anyway. Which means these patents didn't serve any real purpose, and their costs (monopolies) are therefore unjustified.

In a word, Bad.

[rayiner]

That's a pretty myopic view of how h.264, etc, were developed. A lot of work goes into developing standards like h264, LTE, etc. It doesn't just happen by magic. Its expensive to pay experts to research each new iteration of the technology. At the same time, the fact that they must be released as a standard undermines most of the other monetization opportunities, such as trade secrets. Patent licensing creates a unique and very effective regime allowing many companies to work together to develop these open standards, while ensuring that freeloaders can't just use the final specs without contributing either monetarily or in terms of research investment. Without patents I think you'd see a lot more proprietary technologies, with companies keeping new developments secret to try and monetize R&D investment.