Patents work very well in more traditional arts, for example mechanical devices. They're not perfect, but they're good enough at stimulating innovation that mo

Patents work very well in more traditional arts, for example mechanical devices. They're not perfect, but they're good enough at stimulating innovation that most countries have a patent system and they actively encourage their citizens to use it. They're also time tested: the US framers thought so much of patents that they wrote the patent system into our tiny Constitution.