The traditional explanation for the economic usefulness of patents is that it incentivizes public disclosure of discoveries, and prevents trade secrets from dom

The traditional explanation for the economic usefulness of patents is that it incentivizes public disclosure of discoveries, and prevents trade secrets from dominating the innovation economy. (Imagine if the cure to cancer was kept as secret as the recipe for Coca Cola!) The odd part of this case is that it might cause researchers to hold back from publishing their discoveries until they're sure their own institution can 'squeeze out all the juice' and best monetize the novel finding. On the other hand, perhaps it incentivizes more classical research institutions to employ top teams of researchers who can prototype the 'medicine' part of a biomedicine discovery as quickly as possible. In truth, there are a lot of amazing discoveries at the ground level of molecular biology, which plausibly could revolutionize human health, but are still waiting decades later to be shown to be practical.