Comment by logicchains

>It's telling that before the Patent system the solution was secretive guilds that jealously (sometimes lethally) guarded their secrets to avoid competition. This was obviously terrible since it greatly slowed down innovation.

Nowadays HFT technology is extremely competitive, with firms investing tens of millions in custom harder to achieve nanosecond latency improvements, but all this has happened entirely without patents. As an industry HFT is way less monopolised than tech, suggesting trade secrets alone are enough to achieve growth and competition.