Sometimes I think we'd be better off just doing away with patents altogether and letting corporations be responsible for guarding their own secrets. There's lots of downsides to that approach, of course, but the amount of harm that patents do seems to far outweigh them.
At least in tech, corporations generally don't patent their secret sauce anyway. They surround their critical trade secrets with a screen of patents, building up a defense (or offense) against rivals.
At least in tech, corporations generally don't patent their secret sauce anyway. They surround their critical trade secrets with a screen of patents, building up a defense (or offense) against rivals.