Patents require disclosure

Patents require disclosure

Posted Dec 13, 2003 20:28 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
In reply to: There still *is* proprietary scientific knowledge by dlang
Parent article: There still *is* proprietary scientific knowledge

I'd like to fortify this point, by saying a patent doesn't just REQUIRE disclosure; it IS disclosure.

"Patent" is from the Latin meaning "laying open." Patents are designed to give an inventor a way to tell the world what he invented without losing money due to competition. The opposite of having patent isn't everyone being able to use the technology; it's the inventor keeping the technology a secret.

I'll grant that patents are frequently used in ways inconsistent with the goal of getting inventors to disclose their inventions, but that's still the fundamental concept.

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