While many of us are against certain types of patents, this is exactly what patents are for- protecting the invention of an inventor for a very limited time (20

While many of us are against certain types of patents, this is exactly what patents are for- protecting the invention of an inventor for a very limited time (20 years, it used to be 7 if I recall). In return, society gets the invention "source code" in the form of what is essentially exactly how to reproduce the invention.