People&#x27;s incentive to create is the same as it always was: creative people just want to.<p>What patents were set up to prevent, IIRC, was <i>trade secrets</i> - they were a way to bribe creators to publish their ideas rather than sit on them.<p>IMO, they were a sledgehammer to swat a fly. Trade secrets would be reinvented. Locking an idea out of the commons for a whole patent term (and longer if they can attach new patents off the side) is a worse outcome.