Problem is that patents are not used the way they were intended to. A patent was supposed to be licensable so that other companies could still use the said technology if they so wished. But in practice what patents do is lock the market and prevent the exploitation of said technologies until they expire, which in turn slow down innovation significantly.<p>And don&#x27;t even get me started on all the &quot;obvious&quot; patents out there, or the one that clearly are no invention because prior art actually exists - but then they take years to be invalidated, if ever. It is just an enormous debt on Society as a whole.