4 ms·

The purpose of the U.S. patent system is the public dispersion of new knowledge. You publicly disclose how your invention works, and in return you get a limited

The purpose of the U.S. patent system is the public dispersion of new knowledge. You publicly disclose how your invention works, and in return you get a limited monopoly on its production. You don’t need a patent system to incentivize research, people and companies can just treat new inventions as trade secrets and never tell anyone how they work. Plenty of tech companies already do this. Google has not filed patents disclosing exactly how their search system works, for example. The U.S. military has an additional tool to protect knowledge: classification. Again, there is no patent on public file for a functioning hydrogen fusion bomb. So why would the Navy file a patent on something? It is plausible that their goal in doing so was to disclose its existence.

jerry80 6y ago
>The purpose of the U.S. patent system is the public dispersion of new knowledge. That's its (stated) purpose from the viewpoint of society. Patents' purposes from the viewpoint of the inventor is to secure the 20-year monopoly on the invention (or to secure a plausible threat). Nobody would file a patent for the sole purpose of disclosure. If you really want to disclose something, there are a million easier, better, and cheaper ways to do it. >So why would the Navy file a patent on something? It is plausible that their goal in doing so was to disclose its existence. If they wanted disclosure, they could just post it on their website and issue a press release. Or publish a book. Or a journal article. Or add it to their podcast. They already do all these things. Why not for this?