Alexey -- Yeah, this is to what I was alluding in my previous comment... That apparently, the only "benefit" of patents to start-ups is as a "signal" to funders that there is something worth investing in (though I suspect they are more attracted to an asset that the could sell off to an entity seeking to expand its patent portfolio for offensive or defensive purposes). And, indeed, as you point out -- for the innovator, not much benefit at all. But isn't the latter who we actually care about? I'm still looking for this example of innovators who are motivated by patents and copyright, who can't get what they really want from just having trade secrets, or couldn't get benefit from end-user innovation empowered by open source software that exceeds any benefits gained from an IP monopoly (and even provides social benefits of expanded invention besides how they contribute to improving the product in question). If the problem is on the funding side rather than the innovator side, then that's a different problem than the one I keep hearing about of "how can we provide incentives for inventors?"

And really, what we should really care about in terms of social benefits is the best product possible that helps all of us innovate and do useful things. That is what will make everyone more productive. VLC Player is awesome, and it helped me save what could have been hours of frustration when I was trying to play the contents of a DVD as a TA on Friday. It's kind of a long story, but R and Perl have been incredibly powerful in terms of their impact on human genome research. Given how many challenges we face as a society and as a planet, we have a lot of work to do, and if we're going to succeed, we can't have a system that literally prevents people from helping to solve problems. The reason why software patents or software copyrights or some software copyright with fair use solution that I don't understand make me really upset is that I can tell immediately that the outcome will be shittier products over all. And all the instruments of power, judicial, political, law enforcement, are being directed towards this outcome.

-- BahradSokhansanj - 09 Oct 2011