Comment by jmyeet

This is your daily reminder that patents stifle innovation. This was evident over a century ago and the poster child for this is the so-called Wright Brothers patent war [1].

The Wright brothers patented a method of flight control and then went on a litigation spree. The result was that the US was unable to build airplanes. This became a problem when the US entered World War One and the US military had to buy planes from France.

This situation was so bad that the Federal government stepped in to force the major players to create a patent pool, a situation that lasted until 1977.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war