Completely agreed, for the way the patent system actually works in practice. There is a theory that patent rights can encourage inventors to publish their inve

Completely agreed, for the way the patent system actually works in practice. There is a theory that patent rights can encourage inventors to publish their invention, so that everybody benefits in the long run. This is a nice theory, except it doesn't hold up in practice (at least in the tech industry) because (1) patent language is so obfuscated that it is not a useful source of knowledge; and (2) the threat of triple damages means that no (honest) practitioner in their right mind would ever read a patent other than their own. It is possible that in other, slower moving industries, people do get some minor value from reading expired patents. Though somehow I doubt it: in our industry, the useful inventions spread through other channels, and I suspect the same is true everywhere.