Comment by bfivyvysj

Yes, that is the purpose. It incentives R&D by providing a sanctioned monopoly on the result. The trade in return is that the public domain gets access to the trade secret after enough time has passed to provide the inventor with reward for their investment risk.

The problem is the time has been repeatedly extended across the world to the point that society gets very little from this arrangement.

At this point we're better off removing the concept of IP entirely.