Patents worked great for what they were <i>intended</i> for, which was for the English crown to raise funds outside of parliaments control, and later in the US when they used it to encourage the immigration of skilled workers.<p>The English crown had the big problem that its treasury was dictated by parliament during the 16th century, so it sold  royal decrees (writ patents) granting exclusive rights. Parliament passed after an outburst of patenting by the monarch the then new Statute of Monopolies, which said that only Parliament might grant monopolies in statutory form and that only for new inventions.<p>The British North American settlers later recognized that their society benefited by disclosure and that disclosure supplemented the very weak technical literature of the world in which they lived. They had plentiful of free natural resources but a very small skilled workforce, so they wanted to encourage the immigration of skilled people on a deal which required the disclosure of their inventions in a publicly consult-able reference form.