That's a very interesting point. It'd be fun to think about how one could architect a patent system where the duration and scope of a patent is based on the ca

That's a very interesting point. It'd be fun to think about how one could architect a patent system where the duration and scope of a patent is based on the capital costs that went into developing it as well as the capital costs required for a clean room implementation (still seems silly that a patent can affect somebody else from coming up with the same idea independently).