> [disclosure is] an important way the patent system encourages innovation, actually: it forces inventors to build alternative ways to do things Are you sure i

> [disclosure is] an important way the patent system encourages innovation, actually: it forces inventors to build alternative ways to do things Are you sure it is not just a way of forcing people to waste effort making something different when there is a perfectly good solution ready to use? Is it not better to be building on things rather than around them? and having invention driven primarily by demand not by obstacles? > Stop offering patent protection and there’s no more required disclosure -- all this stuff stays locked up as trade secrets Are you sure it is not the likeliness of keeping the secret that dominates here? That is, if you think you can keep an invention secret for longer than a patent term, you will choose that instead of a patent -- since it will give you a longer monopoly. And if you think you cannot keep the secret, patent disclosure does not help anyone else that much, since the secret was going to leak anyway. The supposed rational is one thing. Whether it actually works that way is another -- and there is no clear proof that it does work.