According to Wiki, a patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to an inventor or his assignee for a fixed period of time in exchange for a disclosure of an invention. The profit from patent could promote innovation in my understanding. Companies spend lots of money and energy to develop new products and new technologies. Patent protection is a reward to all the effort. Once the patent expires (such as in pharmaceutical industry), this advantage will go away.
Another popular case is Microsoft. It’s long debated that Microsoft should (or should not) disclose its source code of its software. It’s obvious that once released to anyone (such as government), it would possibly be open to its competitors.
Ethic questions are raised here. Firstly, is it really beneficial to the overall technology development in the society, when patent is introduced? Utilitarian view would probably disagree with that, while shareholder theory believers would support patent which could bring in more profit to investors. If the patented information is open to everyone, some advanced technique or cheaper drugs could be available for consumers. Some companies try to defend its patent seriously so as to defeat other products in the market and earn as much as it could during the patent protection period. Customers have to pay for that.
On the other hand, companies, especially R&D intensive ones, such as pharmaceutical companies, do need patent to reward their expense. It’s kind of a dilemma in my understanding. If something could be done about patent law, who can make and how to make the change is another issue.
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