It's not just on paper. In my own experience I have gotten a lot of utility out of researching old patents (I do aluminum anodizing as a hobby and found detail

It's not just on paper. In my own experience I have gotten a lot of utility out of researching old patents (I do aluminum anodizing as a hobby and found detailed descriptions of stripping solutions in patents). Society needs a system to ensure that innovations are not lost. Abolishing it is in someways similar to the idea of abolishing scientific publications. If you do that, how will breakthroughs be communicated to future generations? Or are you saying that having such a mechanism in place is a bad thing? Just because a problem is hard and a solution hasn't been found doesn't mean that the idea motivating it is flawed.