Indeed. Patents incentivize investment in R&D. There is an argument to be made that the scope of patentable inventions should be more limited, in particular preventing trivial patents that didn’t require substantial R&D, and maybe also that patents shouldn’t last as long.

But doing away completely with patents would certainly stifle companies’ willingness to invest in R&D. They’d rather wait for someone else to invent something they can copy.

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post-it 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Patents incentivize investment in R&D.

In theory or in real life?

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hlynurd 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yet an ungodly amount of money has been pouring into AI R&D

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michaelchisari 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The study could have revealed that industries without patent protection evolve to have better trade secret security, effectively leveling the benefits of patents.

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layer8 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Not all inventions can be effectively kept secret, and patents also have the benefit that what would otherwise remain secrets gets published.

I’m not in favor of the current patent landscape, but doing away completely with them would likely be throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

	▲	michaelchisari 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Obviously. Yet on balance, the ones that can't be kept secret may not be significant. I'm not making a judgement on what the ideal situation is, more so explaining why the referenced study could have come to its conclusion.