I don't think it was BS in the early days of the US, in medieval & renaissance Europe, and in antiquity. Life was harder, populations were orders of magnitude s

I don't think it was BS in the early days of the US, in medieval & renaissance Europe, and in antiquity. Life was harder, populations were orders of magnitude smaller, and a much smaller proportion of people had the means and education to invent things. The middle class was non-existent, and the most modern technology of the time was only available to an elite few. So the legal fiction that inventions could only happen "once" was not so terribly inaccurate; it was even useful. But I agree that given how many people have access to the means of invention today, patent systems have become an absurd notion, and they only create absurd results in the marketplace. The time for patent systems came and is now long gone. Thanks for changing my mind.