[Houshalter]

>If there is a choice, I will almost always seek out a paper (or source code) rather than an accompanying patent to get an understanding of new technology.

On the other hand patents do allow companies to publish their work without fear of losing their trade secret, and to invest in research in the first place. The papers might not be published at all if not for patents. For example Google, Facebook, Microsoft all fund and publish machine learning research now.

Of course this is probably only true for a small fraction of all patents, and probably doesn't benefit small players very much.