<i>&gt; The point is that monopolies on ideas are fundamentally unfair</i>...<p>I could just as easily say &quot;free-riding off somebody else&#x27;s ingenuity is fundamentally unfair&quot;.<p><i>&gt; ... but it is provably false in Software.</i><p>Citation needed? Many of the sources cited in OP have flaws and&#x2F;or have been refuted elsewhere, especially studies by Bessen &amp; co. Many of their other sources are from people who don&#x27;t know the first thing about patents. They cite that &quot;This American Life&quot; episode where the clueless dude from M-CAM suggested there&#x27;s a patent on toast, something that you&#x27;d know is BS with a glance at the actual claim and 5 minutes of research on Google.<p>On the other hand, there are studies showing that having patents increases the chances of software startups get VC funding and successful exits by a factor of four. How much innovation happens without funding? Even the majority of open source is financed by various industry sources.<p><i>&gt; When has something (in software) been invented by building on some text in a patent filing?</i><p>And how often is something in software <i>not</i> been built by simply copying somebody else&#x27;s ideas? Some ideas are harder to generate (e.g. RSA) than others (e.g. online pet store) and deserve protection.