Devil's advocate, but one might argue patents actually incentivize progress. Without patents, there is far less incentive to seek progress. What's the point fo

Devil's advocate, but one might argue patents actually incentivize progress. Without patents, there is far less incentive to seek progress. What's the point for a for-profit organization to spend resources on Research, just to see your innovation immediately copied? And if said for-profit organization still innovate, it has a strong incentive to keep its innovation as secret as possible. Patents by contrast, incentivize sharing, on one hand it makes the innovation public knowledge, and on the other licensing agreements usually exist. And in the end, 20 years is really short compared to human history. Are patents an ideal solution? Hell no, this system is too easily abused (patent trolling, patent thickets, etc), and feels really wrong at times (patents on life-saving drugs for example). But so far, that's the best compromise we manage to mostly agree on in terms of worldwide IP recognition.