> However, there's very little (economic) incentive to innovate In the economic sense, that might be true, but on the contrary, patents prevent (or hinder) peo

> However, there's very little (economic) incentive to innovate In the economic sense, that might be true, but on the contrary, patents prevent (or hinder) people who might have good ideas from innovating - and I'd wager that those people are way more numerous than the lot of people who wouldn't try to further advance current technologies (or invent new ones) just because there suddenly is no more economic incentive to do so. > By filing a patent, you're telling the world how to do something (allegedly) new. I don't want to be told how to do it, and then be told that I have to wait 20 years until I can use it. I want to use it now, and I want to build on it now. So does the rest of humanity. 20 years is way too long, but so are 1 year, 6 months, 10 days or half a minute. It's plain and simply ridiculous - as well has highly paradoxical - to stop progress (even if only temporary) in the name of promoting progress. There is only one alternative in this entire mess - abolish patents, completely. They never fulfilled the purpose they were intended for (even historically they caused quite the opposite, see Watt and the Steam Engine), and serve the few powerful and rich to the detriment of humanity as a whole (again, see Watt).