What a mess. Starting at the title, there's no such thing as a patented discovery. (http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/what-cant-be-patented.html h

What a mess. Starting at the title, there's no such thing as a patented discovery. (http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/what-cant-be-patented.html http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/what-cant-be-p...) Secondly, it really doesn't matter if "almost no" patented innovations get used, just as (to make an analogy) it doesn't matter if "almost no founders get VC funding" (!). There are over twenty million founders in the United States alone who would take $100k into their 'startup business' from a VC tomorrow. So what. "Almost no founders ever get VC funding" is a useless observation (even if it's true), and I make this analogy because here on HN we have a lot of experience with the cases where they do, and could rightfully see the sentence as a useless observation. There is less experience with using the patent system here, but what matters, of course, is patented innovations that do or did require the patent system. And anyone who has any experience whatsoever with this subject knows about what kinds of cases this applies to. I am not going to elaborate but I found the article basically totally worthless and clearly written by someone who has no information on the workings of the system. Clearly there is a systemic cost to having a patent system at all. But perhaps the reason the author had to write that no patented discoveries get used (which is a truism, since there is no such things as a patented discovery) is that the same is not true for innovations and inventions.