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That situation is an unfortunate side effect. The point of patents is that the inventor requires an incentive (a limited term monopoly in case of patents) to ma
by atakan_gurkan 15y ago
That situation is an unfortunate side effect. The point of patents is that the inventor requires an incentive (a limited term monopoly in case of patents) to make their methods publicly known. The protection is against the copiers, but since an independent developer is indistinguishable from a copier, they get excluded from using the idea as well.
I always thought that this is precisely why the patentable ideas are non-trivial.
- edanm 15y agoYou're right. But even non-trivial ideas tend to occur to several people at once, which is a part of the problem.