>invalidating the patents was a huge net good. I hear "this put the computer in the public domain" a lot. But it was patented, and that didn't stop the digita

>invalidating the patents was a huge net good. I hear "this put the computer in the public domain" a lot. But it was patented, and that didn't stop the digital revolution one bit. Eckert and Mauchly filed a patent (on ENIAC) and it was believed to be valid for the next 25 years. That doesn't mean anybody tried to create a monopoly. IBM quickly traded some punch card patent rights with the owner, Remington Rand, for the (still pending!) ENIAC patent. Once it was finally granted Remington Rand pressed for royalties from the other computer companies. Evidently they asked for too much, and that fomented Honeywell's suit to invalidate the patent, which succeeded. That, technically, put the ENIAC in the public domain, but by then there were thousands of other computer related patents on the books. They annoy, especially the bad ones, but business goes on.