There has been mindboggling investment in machine learning over the last few decades, yet almost nothing is protected by patent (even where patents exist, they'

There has been mindboggling investment in machine learning over the last few decades, yet almost nothing is protected by patent (even where patents exist, they're purely defensive). Tesla's patents were voluntarily neutered, so anyone can use them - hasn't stopped Tesla from investing in R&D. Microsoft has done something similar. It's simply not true to say that innovation or R&D would grind to a halt if patents ceased to exist. If anything, we might even see the complete opposite, because it massively lowers the barriers to entry. Bad patents and their negative impact on the world far, far outweigh the positive impact from the good ones (if there is such a thing). Scrap the whole damn system.