>To my knowledge, these patents provide no value to the company or society beyond being a negotiating tool if another company tries to sue them for infringing a

>To my knowledge, these patents provide no value to the company or society beyond being a negotiating tool if another company tries to sue them for infringing a patent. Now, I am as leery of patents as a metric as anyone here, but I wonder if your context is software or “tech” patents. I am probably in the minority but I do regularly read patents in order to teach myself the basics of esoteric subfields e.g cutting edge (not bleeding edge) industrial chemistry. Ok, as an interested layman (and therefore a reasonable constituent of “the society” of which you speak) I might be wrong about how cutting edge it is, but I usually feel enlightened after one of these forays. Probably not the intention of the patent writers.. EDIT: I try to read the latest papers too, but I find that patents help to provide the missing context EDIT: this contemporaneous HN thread provides another example of the usefulness of patents https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28889591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28889591