Sorry, but no.

Posted Sep 9, 2011 12:18 UTC (Fri) by khim (guest, #9252) [Link]

I had this (absurd?) idea that patents were established to give incentive for inventors to disclose their secrets in exchange of protection against copycats (big and small).

Yes, this is popular idea, but as I've already said it's retcon. Initially patents covered extremely wide areas and continued almost indefinitely - and this was so obviously bad that people decided to abandon them. But it looked like some patents are less evil then others and may, in fact, benefit the society. These were retained - and people tried to justify them ever since.

When Statute of Monopolies abandoned most patents it gave such a strong push to the society development (this act basically jump-started first Agricultural Revolution and later Industrial Revolution) that the problems with remaining [relatively narrow] patents were barely felt - but over time lawers expanded the scope of patents and now they are significant barrier for the progress. It's time if not to abandon then at least trim them again.