Hacker News Reader

Patents are vital to bringing things to market. It lessens the risk associated with investors getting returns, which allows funding for development.

I get that people don't like patents because they sometimes get abused, but on the whole I think we wouldn't have a lot of the things we take for granted if they didn't exist.

View on HN

Let me add a personal anecdote: my uncle has developed a better sprinkler head. Think of bearded inventor tinkering in his garage for a decade. This was late 80s /early 90s so not much CAD was involved.

This is where the patent system shines. Because he got a patent he could shop around, sell it to a company which made a tidy profit on it. He didn't need to raise capital to establish a factory and all that to bring it to market and the company buying it seriously got ahead without spending an inordinate amount of money and time inventing the thing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com