Comment by jjk166

Patents were invented as a way for governments (and really at the time monarchs) to regulate commercial activity and attract skilled craftspeople. Modern patents were a reform of this to stop monarchs from abusing this power as effectively a tax. This starts in Venice in 1474. By the time the US patent system was created, the goal was to promote publication of technical information, rather than it being kept secret. This was a few decades before the first industrial corporations in the US.