Well, you thought wrong. Patents were intended (and, for the longest time, worked quite well) as a trade between inventors and society: the inventor gets a lega

Well, you thought wrong. Patents were intended (and, for the longest time, worked quite well) as a trade between inventors and society: the inventor gets a legal 20 year monopoly on using his invention, and the rest of the world learns how exactly it works so that they can use it freely afterwards.