Whether they encourage innovation or not, patents were at least intended to. You don't get a patent for nothing. In return for the exclusive right to use an ide

Whether they encourage innovation or not, patents were at least intended to. You don't get a patent for nothing. In return for the exclusive right to use an idea, you have to publish it, and it was largely to encourage such openness that patents were established. How common is it in practice for useful information to be gleaned from published software patents? How many of us have ever had a problem to solve, and thought: I know, I'll search the patent database to see if there's a clever solution that's been disclosed by the inventor! I would suspect very few. Which implies that we're not getting much out of "our" side of the bargain.