>> Patents clearly kill innovation. Like, that shouldn't even be a question. Surely there are examples where patents have stifled innovation. I am unclear how

>> Patents clearly kill innovation. Like, that shouldn't even be a question. Surely there are examples where patents have stifled innovation. I am unclear how this would apply in general. The idea of patents is to encourage inventors or organizations "invest" into research and development to create inventions and reap rewards for their investments. If there were no patent protection (and ignoring other forms of intellectual property for sake of simplicity), then inventors or organizations would either (a) not put money into any inventions that could easily be copied by others upon launch, or (b) have measures to keep the inventions hidden even upon launch. In that sense, patents mechanism are intended to lead higher investments towards developing inventions, and, are set up such that the inventions become publicly known and available after respective periods of time. Is the suggestion that the patents should be abolished? If so, one also needs to explain how and why would inventors and organizations spend money into research work leading to good inventions? I agree that problems do happen. There are many patents around which should not have been issued. However, the challenge is not that the law is at fault. The challenge is that execution is at fault wherein many obvious "inventions" get accepted for example. I can accept if the argument made is that good execution of the well-intended patent laws is guaranteed to be a challenge and therefore the patent law does not make any practical sense. However, we also need to be aware of the side effects of it as reduction in innovation because of reduced research and development investments. --- Recommended reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent