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@icedquinn @lispi314

from a practical perspective getting rid of it entirely puts you back at that trade secret corporate espionage dystopia again,

i disagree on that point, but more generally on the framing.

the whole stated purpose of patents is to encourage invention and technological innovation. the claim is that they do this by promoting sharing via monopoly grants instead of secretiveness. whether getting rid of patents creates a trade secret corporate espionage dystopia is the wrong question - the question should be does removing patents increase invention and innovation?

prior to patents you had a lot of trade secrets where people would hide everything. mathematicians for example kept a reserve stock of proofs to win competitions

firstly, patents have never covered mathematical proofs and so any secretiveness amongst mathematicians is irrelevant :) more importantly, prior to patents (in the modern sense) you had royally decreed monopolies with indefinite term and ill-defined scope. much like modern day patents the incentive was to keep the invention secret until a patent could be secured - and no incentive to innovate because the monopolies were granted by product rather than process.

however, there have been various industries and times that were not subject to such state-given monopolies. the record there shows significant innovation that drops off when patents are extended to cover the industry. that drop off is probably a combination of patents slowing innovation (by diverting resources from research into litigation) and by the field maturing and the low-hanging fruit being explored.

see Against Intellectual Monopoly, in particular Chapter 8 about whether monopolies increase innovation and Chapter 9 on the pharmaceutical industry.