Apologies for the late response: > Writings contemporary with that exact clause explicitly state its justification... However, the clause wisely did not inclu

Apologies for the late response: > Writings contemporary with that exact clause explicitly state its justification... However, the clause wisely did not include any of that and just specified the intended ends ("progress...") and the means ("time-limited monopoly"). This has stood the test of time, as approaches that were not feasible before (e.g. the ease of reverse-engineering) meant secrecy was not an option and people sought other incentives to invest resources into innovative activity. > A per-copy license fee of a penny kills FOSS completely; there is no "increased costs". True, but just because it's FOSS does not mean it gets to free-ride on the fruits of somebody else's labor. If some people want to give away the fruits of your labor for free, more power to them, but that does not mean they get to demand others to do so as well. > In all cases, I specifically noted the novelty of the software developed; Well, leaving aside that things like WebRTC is entirely a re-implementation of pre-existing technology in a browser, I noted that much of the software was developed nonetheless. Any novelty developed could have been made available in many other non-infringing ways, such as publishing of papers or technical documents. I'd still say that counts as technical progress. Not being distributable as free software sounds more like a business problem to me. > And in case it looks like I've only seen one side of the issue: ... Ditto, besides working with patents, I've contributed to open source projects, open sourced a bunch of my own work and use open-source projects on a daily basis. I see waste and inefficiencies in both systems, but I also see what each has enabled and remain convinced that we need both systems. > All innovation is follow-on innovation. True, and this is why patent systems work by distinguishing claimed advances over the prior art before awarding a patent. > "pay their fair dues" presupposes that ideas should have owners and monopolies who can extract dues; Or it simply recognizes that ideas have value and people who come up with good ideas should be rewarded just as well as people who provide value in other means. > The rate of innovation is far too fast for patents. I have seen ideas introduced almost two decades ago get traction just now. The alternative viewpoint is that good ideas have value forever and 20 years is a fair amount of time to attempt to capture their value. > "Ideas should not have owners, and inventors do not have an innate right to control ideas" is a defensible position, just one you disagree with. My position is more that people should reap rewards proportional to what value they provide, and in my mind innovation is one of the biggest creators of value out there. As such Apple, the richest company in the world (and not one I particularly like) should have captured a much larger portion of the smartphone market. Unfortunately, we have no better means of capturing value other than treating things like property, and this has been extended to ideas. If there are better means shown to have worked for ideas, I'm all for them, but at this point, patents are it.