> 1. The inventor would pay the R&D costs with no good way to recoup them, because he'd be competing against knockoffs who didn't have to make that investment,

> 1. The inventor would pay the R&D costs with no good way to recoup them, because he'd be competing against knockoffs who didn't have to make that investment, and can price accordingly. You'd be putting the actual inventor at a disadvantage. Yes, the means of ensuring that research and development would be funded would have to change. This doesn't imply that there would be no r&d, rather the current r&d is being subsidized by laws that give legal privileges to certain corporations while prohibiting their competition from competing. > 2. There'd be no incentive for inventors to actually publish designs for their inventions. Most people who argue against patents as a concept forget is that to get one you have to publish plans for your idea openly, which makes it much easier to copy. The limited monopoly is an incentive to part with that information. You'd end up leaving the public domain poorer. You could pay them for the design. Or you could reverse engineer the design from the actual physical product. > 3. Invention and production are different skillsets. For an author to get paid for writing, they shouldn't need to own a printing press and distribution network. likewise people shouldn't be subject to violence for copying intangibles.