Outside of academia, the patent situation looks much like this. In theory, patents have two parts -- the claims (what specific attributes of your invention are

Outside of academia, the patent situation looks much like this. In theory, patents have two parts -- the claims (what specific attributes of your invention are getting patent protection) and the teaching (the bulk of the text/diagrams, which are supposed to teach one of "ordinary skill in the art" what would be needed to duplicate the invention). Turns out that you want claims as broad as possible and teachings as useless as possible -- so that nobody can read your patent and then patent other surrounding things. It's gotten so bad that most companies now instruct their employees never to read any patents -- the potential liability increase because they "knew" that something potentially-patented was out there so fantastically dwarfs what you could learn by reading the "teachings" It's all about incentives, as you say. And science today has more or less just as perverse incentives as the IP marketplace.