> My own observation has been that with the 3D printer for example, innovation was stagnant for the 20 years that they were under patent. Once the patents expir

> My own observation has been that with the 3D printer for example, innovation was stagnant for the 20 years that they were under patent. Once the patents expired, innovation in the space boomed and the price of a decent 3D printer dropped by 100x. I've seen this in other fields as well. Regular printers were mostly giant appliances until xerox's patents expired. I suspect the extremely slow start for VR (before it finally has started going somewhere now) is due to the flurry of patents you can see from the 90's finally expiring. I'm quite hopeful that a lot of technologies will take off in this way in the next few years, due to the expiration of patents from the internet bubble's R&D. And regardless what one thinks about patents in theory, in practice it has clearly become a horrific mess, with the patent office rejected far too few applications. Applying technology everyone learns in college to a new problem actually counts as novel and non-obvious to them. The "saving grace" is America's "ask forgiveness later" business culture. Basically violate patents as necessary, and if you make it big, pile up your own counter portfolio of patents to go to war with. The beneficiaries are the patent office and of course lawyers. Patent trolls become a problem though, as they have no products to get counter-sued over.