>> Interesting. I thought the whole point of a patent is to financially
>> cripple your opponents so you then have the whole market to yourself and
>> can then charge extortionate prices for a poor quality product...
> 
>     I assume you're not joking.
> 
>     The point of a patent is to promote the knowledge of technology. The 
> government makes you an offer: Make your design public, and they'll give 
> you exclusive rights to it for a limited time.

Yeah, that's the theory.

For example, the drugs companies have patents on particular molecules 
because it costs hundreds of billions of dollars to get a drugs license 
for one. If some company spends a hundred billion dollars getting a drug 
licenced, they do *not* want a bunch of other companies then coming 
along and making the same chemical, and selling it for 50p per tonne.

Typically at least, *making* the drug is dirt-cheap. But *testing* it to 
make sure it's safe (and actually works) costs an absurd amount of 
money. They don't want to pay for all that testing and then have 
somebody else benefit from it.

> Sooner or later, the 
> patent will expire and not be renewed, at which point anyone can make 
> it.

Surely somebody has already come up with a way to get round this minor 
detail?

For example, all of the Windows APIs are patented, to prevent ReactOS 
from existing. But how many decades old is Windows? Surely those patents 
should have expired by now. (Ignoring for the fact that a set of 
function names shouldn't be patentable in the first place...)

>     The requirement to disclose the design a product may not be amenable 
> to a company. So sometimes they don't patent it, but maintain it as an 
> industry secret. I'm told that stuff like the Coca Cola recipe is such 
> an example.

Ah yes, Coca Cola. Seventy billion gallons of the stuff is made every 
year, and yet, according to urban legend, only two people in the world 
know how it's made. Yeah, right. ;-)

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