Software patents should not exist.
The consequence of this is that the state-of-the-art in many areas of software are not in the public literature and there is no trivial way to learn it. Ubiquitous deployment in the cloud greatly limits the ability to reverse-engineer the underlying architectures, data structures, and algorithms. This is notionally the situation patents sought to avoid, but the practical unenforceability of algorithm patents has made it the default outcome regardless of whether there are patents on software.
That’s a fantastic argument against software patents. I can’t believe I’ve never thought about it in that way.
The complaint is that software patents have been awarded and interpreted far too broadly, and coupled with the relatively low cost of R&D for software, have begun to stymied innovation in the same way patents intended to prevent.
But they didn't innovate and were taken over by Lotus 1-2-3 four years later.
Lotus was great, graphs and all.
Same thing happened to the Lotus, Excel was just better. Lotus didn't innovate (e.g. IBM had first ever pivot tables and they made separate spreadsheet program for it instead off improving Lotus).
Or the patent protection is contingent on limits to marketing and admin overhead
Preserving this knowledge for the future of humanity is critical.
OTOH, I’ve never, not once, ever, heard of someone reading through the patent database to learn how to do a thing. I’m sure someone has done such a thing, but that’s not the norm. The patent database is where you record that you were the first to claim to have done a thing. It’s not where you meaningfully explain how.
Don't be deluded, the patent system serves as a weapon for bigger companies to block competition. That is their only goal.
You should always be able to make your opponent's arguments at least as well as they do, as that is the first step to overcoming them.
The argument from patent proponents is that without the legal monopoly, they would rely on trade secret law instead, so they would do their best to ensure no one else understood what they do. They still do, within the confines of what disclosure is legally required to get a patent issued (I once had an engineer tell me that if he had not invented the thing being patented, he would have no idea what the patent application the lawyers wrote for it was describing), but at least there is a legal requirement.
Of course, there are important contexts where that argument is irrelevant, such as standards development. Trade secret law is no use there, because the value is in the network effects of the standard, not the invention. Yet we still have patent-riddled standards.
Look at China, and the argument of "maybe it will be bad" turns out to be wrong. I'm not saying the system is perfect, far from it, but the idea that patents are a life-saving measure is utterly false. Companies live and die in both systems, but at least in China they get to share their improvements.
The premise is that a patent is necessary to have funds for continuing innovation, but that's just not understanding what capitalism is and how pervasive it is in our society. The reason individuals need money is precisely because of capitalism redistributing money to those who have the most already, not to the ones who need it the most, not to the ones making the most progress, or not to everyone in a fair manner allowing all of us to live without worrying about that aspect (yes, there is more than enough resources creation for all of us). The patent system only furthers this uneven distribution. Innovators do not calculate the amount they might be getting from their invention before setting about and coming up with something new; that is a lie that needs to disappear.
Patents are not making the society better.