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Comment by rswail | Hacker News Reader

Except that the purpose of patents is not to be "pro-consumer", at least in the US Constitution, it's to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".

The purpose is to provide an incentive to creators to reveal their inventions and make them available to the public and other creators, instead of keeping them as trade secrets.

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>Except that the purpose of patents is not to be "pro-consumer", at least in the US Constitution, it's to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".

Perfect reason to abandon patents. American innovation has ascended to the top of the species; it doesn't need additional protection.

> American innovation has ascended to the top of the species

What on earth does that mean and how is it relevant? Are you trying to say that there is no more "[P]rogress of Science and useful Arts" left to be made?

Patents protect the innovators; American tech is the best on the planet; the bust humans have to offer, in aggregate (whether measured by patents or money generated by them). There is obviously progress to be made, I just believe that American technologists no longer need patent protections. We are not a small upstart country anymore; we have scaled.

In fact, not only have we scaled as a country and an economy, we are now in the enshittification + rent seeking phase of capitalism, which is precisely why patent protections should be discarded.

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