Hmm, the patent wars and debates remind me that certain technologies need not patents but sharing. Bitcoin is in mind. Suppose if Satoshi patent his non-obviou

Hmm, the patent wars and debates remind me that certain technologies need not patents but sharing. Bitcoin is in mind. Suppose if Satoshi patent his non-obvious invention and try to earn money off of it in patent fees. He would need to sue people and unmask his identity. That would impede the growth and usefulness of bitcoin, no many how non-obvious bitcoin is and in spite of the fact that it was not simultaneously invented by anybody else. If we assumed Satoshi is a greedy self-interested individual, he would have realized that patents do not help him become wealthy. The fatal assumption of the patent system today is that patents are the unnecessary incentives or the correct incentives for the vast majority of inventions, if not for all the cases of inventions. We are used to the idea of discrete innovation and invention of technologies, but perhaps technological progress is more like a stream rather than a series of isolated incidents. By placing a patent in front of a stream, we built a dam that slow down the flow of progress.