Comment by adrian_b

You just repeat the original justification for patents.

The current practice of patents is very different. Most patents are not filed by inventors, but by the employers of inventors, and most of those companies do not file patents for the possible revenue that could be generated by licensing, but only to prevent competition in their market. They have absolutely no intention to license fairly and without discrimination those patents. Therefore the publication of those patents provides absolutely no benefit for the society.

There exists today one class of patents whose purpose is to obtain revenue from licensing, which are the patents that are necessary for implementing various standards, like standards for communication protocols, for video and audio compression and the like.

These patents are the only kind that can provide substantial revenues today, because everybody is forced to use them.

Wherever a patent is not strictly necessary for compatibility with some standard, everybody will choose alternative solutions, even if they are inferior, instead of paying unreasonable licensing fees. There are a lot of useful patents that covered techniques that remained unused until a quarter of century passed and the patents expired, after which those techniques became ubiquitous.

As patents are implemented today, especially in USA and in the countries whom USA has blackmailed successfully into updating their patent laws to match the American way, e.g. by allowing patents for software, they are one of the greatest impediments of technical progress, unlike what was hoped when the patent system was created.

It is likely that this degradation of the purpose of the patent system is closely linked to the shift in patent ownership from individual inventors to big companies that employ inventors.