Patents should be understood as an alternative to trade secret.
The original reason for patents is enabling more information to become a public. When the patent system did not exist, the only way to protect inventions was to keep them secret. Patent is way to separate information from the economic use of the information. Without patents you must protect the information if you want exclusivity.
Imagine that some extremely important and new algorithm is not patented but kept a secret instead. Today it's possible use provide software as a service and keep the algorithm within protected servers.
> cannot grant monopoly of their usage to their discoverers.
Current patent system is too restrictive and should be reformed. Instead of monopoly, it would be better to have mandatory licensing for algorithms for short period. For example 5 years with some fancy auctioning system to discover the correct price.
The original reason for patents is enabling more information to become a public. When the patent system did not exist, the only way to protect inventions was to keep them secret. Patent is way to separate information from the economic use of the information. Without patents you must protect the information if you want exclusivity.
Imagine that some extremely important and new algorithm is not patented but kept a secret instead. Today it's possible use provide software as a service and keep the algorithm within protected servers.
> cannot grant monopoly of their usage to their discoverers.
Current patent system is too restrictive and should be reformed. Instead of monopoly, it would be better to have mandatory licensing for algorithms for short period. For example 5 years with some fancy auctioning system to discover the correct price.