it's hard to find any examples where patents have stiffled innovation. Of all the hundreds or millions of patents it's only possible to find very few if any historical examples where patents stifle innovation.<p>What patents do achieve is exactly what they are there for. which is to protect the inventor of something usefull for a period of time.<p>If you want to use innovation that has patent protection, you should reward the person who invented it, OR invent something better youreself.<p>That applices to things like Ogg Thorbis, where new technologies were developed in spite of patents. If there were not patents on MPEG Ogg would not have been innovated.<p>Same with file systems, if there were no patentson NTFS or FAT, then why would ext3 and so on mabey would not be where they are now.<p>Fact is patents are there for a reason, (apart from it being law). They appear to work, and they dont appear to be affecting innovation to any degree.<p>Sure, there are groups who would be happy to ride the coat tails of others innovations and inventions. But that is only so they are not able to innovate themselves. They like something that works, and have a 'me too' attitude.<p>(why should someone else get rich, when I can copy that and get rich as well).