Came here to say the same.<p>I patented a thing while I was at university - there was some prior art but I&#x27;d come up with a neat solution (literally as well as figuratively) that actually worked - got as far as building a few prototypes.<p>I had a degree to finish, and barely managed to scrape the cash together for the UK and European patents. Let it sit, naively thinking that someone would want to develop this tech and would be in touch.<p>About six years ago a large corporation filed a patent that was substantially identical to mine - they replaced a spiral with a circle, as it&#x27;s cheaper to manufacture, which, while covered by my claims, was secondary to the device. They shortly thereafter took the product to market. They did at least cite me in prior art.<p>From what I can gather it wasn&#x27;t a commercial success, it added too much cost to the product it enhanced, but even if it had been, my recourse would&#x27;ve been the square root of fuck all.<p>So yeah. Patents are for corporations. They&#x27;re there to stifle innovation and shut the small guy out.<p>Which is a shame, as that&#x27;s literally the exact opposite of their purpose - they were developed to bring about a system that would release ideas to the public domain after a set period of benefit for their creator.<p>My &quot;sit on it&quot; behaviour is admittedly not their purpose, but neither was their &quot;trample on it&quot;.