I agree, but: > Patents don’t even appear to be serving their intended purpose I think there's a lot of misunderstanding of what their intended purpose actual

I agree, but: > Patents don’t even appear to be serving their intended purpose I think there's a lot of misunderstanding of what their intended purpose actually is. The point of patents is to foster innovation -- not, as many think, to provide a financial benefit for innovation. Those may sound similar, but there are two very important differences: one, it assumes that financial benefit automatically promotes innovative things, and two, it assumes that financial benefit is the only motivation behind creating the patent system. The former is a really complicated topic, and I'm not sure how much reputable, peer-reviewed research has gone into evaluating it. But the idea that financial incentives are the reason why the patent system was created is simply not accurate. The patent system was created as a compromise: when you invent something, a patent gives you exclusive rights over it, yes. But in exchange, critically, you must publish, in detail, the exact workings of the invention. In other words, the public good intended by creating the patent system was the free exchange of ideas, even if your ability to actually use those ideas was limited by licensing fees. Today, we live in a world where (I think it's pretty clear) patents are not the most effective tool available to promote the free exchange of ideas. I mean, you can learn a whole lot more about how something works by turning to youtube than by reading its patents. So half of the bargain is gone, irrelevant. But we've gotten so used to them that I haven't heard any real, substantive, serious discussion in political circles about what that means for the patent system as a whole.