Patents are an exchange. I share my invention, you provide protection so I can recoup the costs of creation. Without them, there is little incentive to create,

Patents are an exchange. I share my invention, you provide protection so I can recoup the costs of creation. Without them, there is little incentive to create, and much more incentive to rip off someone else's work. The result would be a reduction of technology that would put luddites to shame. If we got rid of the patent system today, there would probably still be vaccines 5 years from today because of the prior investment. But, in 100 years, the only people who could get vaccines would be the ultra wealthy, and 100 years after that we would lose the knowledge to create a lot of new technology because the old tech never sufficiently made it into the public sphere.