"defensive patents" Yes, makes it sound like patents are a legalized protection racket.
There has to be some reasonable line between incentivizing investment and "everyone had a right to everyone else's ideas".
But any mechanical contraption is ultimately just physics at work, and physics is just math as well. So, what's the difference?
At least it seems plausible that the current way of "incentivizing investment" is not working, and we might even be better off completely without it.
If it is also the case that patent holders purposely withold the very trade secrets that is the bargaining chips that gets you a patent according to the spirit of the law, then if it isn't a racket, it's still immoral and needs to stop being allowed.
So many patents these days are completely devoid of the secrets they are supposed to both protect, and publish. Little is thus gained for the public good, and much is lost.
It strikes me as odd that patents has such a strong support in the US, as generally there seems to be the case that the government isn't wanted where it's not absolutely needed, and I find it hard to see how one could argue that patents are so integral to society that they should fall in that category according to the metrics that seems to be used for other commonly government controlled areas.
It is, when most "R&D" is trivial compared to the revenues you command, and is stealing off earlier ideas, government subsidies, and so on, anyway...
Besides, you said it yourself: "protecting". It obviously is a protection racket, and is an artificial limitation imposed on the market by legal dictum.
Artificial because, unlike e.g. police protection against mere theft or contract law, this one, as history shows, is not necessary for the market to operate and grow.
You're meant to pick two extreme positions and imply the reasonable compromise is midway between them.
Instead you chose one extreme and one reasonable sounding position.
Not all, certainly, and I cannot quantify how much as a fraction. However, I can give the anecdote of a former friend who worked in audio needing to get a patent on something (encryption I think) to get industry certification for their products. Their patent was modified by the lawyers from something novel to something which already existed, but the patent was granted anyway and nobody really cared because the patent was only applied for to get the certification.
Isn't this just argument to moderation?
Moreover, patent portfolios that inhibit competition through the threat of a lawsuit are disincentivizing investment and competition.
This is also why patent trolls are such a nuisance, since defensive patents don't work on entities that don't produce anything.