What do you think the world would look like if no one could benefit economically from having invented valuable technology?
You are probably surrounded by inventions whose patents ran out long ago and which continue to benefit mankind long after the inventors have died.
Do you drive a car? Own a computer? Take a generic medication? Without the economic incentives, would any of these things exist? Thomas Edison found a thousand ways NOT to make an effective light bulb. Who would have gone to the trouble and expense without some period of exclusive rights to such an invention?
I was fascinated several years ago when I ran across an early microprocessor chip that was being manufactured in the Soviet Union. (Remember them?) It was a copy of an early Intel 8080 chip. Would you rather live in the former USSR or here in the U.S.? I know what I would choose and why.
Don’t drink and post.
We don’t know if they were funded by the government or university or private research.
Patents and IP are not as sacrosanct as believed. I would like to see google, twitter, facebook et al, have all their IP and patents stripped.
They have become news media and information choke points.