Well, actually the purpose of patents IS to allow you to get rich. Why? Well, by protecting the invention, you allow the inventor to make money with it for some

Well, actually the purpose of patents IS to allow you to get rich. Why? Well, by protecting the invention, you allow the inventor to make money with it for some time. This means that if you put millions in R&D, you have a guarantee that if there's a result, you can also win back the investment. Do you really think pharmaceutical companies would pour so much money into research if whatever they invented was immediatly copied by another company which doesn't put any money in R&D. But I agree that patents are sometimes absurd, software patents are quite absurd most of the time.