I suspect many people question the value of the patent system at all, so the size of any company doesn't come into it. The patent system was designed to stimula

I suspect many people question the value of the patent system at all, so the size of any company doesn't come into it. The patent system was designed to stimulate innovation by allowing inventors to be open with their ideas without risk of "losing out on their idea." When it was conceived, it may have been a worthy system solving a real problem. But today, it's hard to argue that without the patent system we'd lose out on any innovation. Given the population size and the ease at which it takes to come up with and validate an idea, twenty five years now is an eternity. Do you seriously think that no one would have come up with this particular idea if there were no patent system? I'd argue, that even without copying any idea, this sort of thing would be independently "discovered" many many times within 25 years. Why should we reward the first person with the money to get the patent? Why should we not instead reward the first to market? Is not being the first to market already a reward? I'm firmly in the camp that ideas are dime a dozen, and the value is in the implementation/verification of them not in simply writing down a vague notion. The patent system rewards the latter and doesn't even require demonstrating a working prototype, let alone a viable product! It's rewarding the wrong thing.