I am not disputing that patents provide the recognized inventor a period of monopoly rights which allow that person higher profits for the patent period. What I argue is that this system as implemented does not actually increase the rate of innovation as we are typically told. I argue that in fact this system dramatically slows the rate of innovation. This occurs because every patent benefits one individual while a thousand others are now prevented from discovery along the same lines as the awarded patent. A system without patents would see more market competition among motivated inventors as one good idea cannot carve a moat around any particular concept. You can see a real world example of capitalists competing without patents in China, and the result is rapid innovation. Here is a written first hand account from a respected hacker and engineer. [1]
So with both open source and with Shanzai you see that large numbers of people are often motivated to work on the same problem. The function of patents is to prevent those people from pursuing forks of good ideas. This is why 3D printers had gone down in price by 50% after ten years under patent, but in the ten years after the patent expired they went from $25000 to $300 (1.2%). A multitude of curious people will make more engineering progress than one well funded group with a powerful legal monopoly. This is my claim about an under appreciated aspect of patents and this has been discussed in scholarly literature. [2]
A common question I hear relates to funding. People say no one will make investments if someone else can copy their work. But I argue this does not mean investment will cease, but that the nature of investment would change. Broadly it would change from fewer larger investments to more frequent smaller investments. One quarter you get a boost of funding to beat the competition to market, next quarter they copy you but then you copy them back and the cat and mouse game continues. This is actually true capitalist market competition. [3]
So my argument is that patents do not actually accelerate innovation as we are told, but they actually slow down the rate of innovation. And it makes sense: the sole purpose of a patent is to limit innovation for everyone but the patent holder. We were raised on the story that the secondary effects are positive, but that story is not so simple.
Finally, I will say that secrecy can be punished and openness can be enforced. If we all understand how important open source is to rapid innovation, we can make public commitments to boycott those companies and fund efforts to reverse engineer their work. It’s already the case that open source projects avoid proprietary modules as much as possible. We could do this as a society for all goods.
[1] https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=284