[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.