<i>But that said, I don&#x27;t see why the people who did this &quot;obviously&quot; don&#x27;t need a &quot;fair chance to recoup their R&amp;D investment&quot;. Does it say anywhere that the R&amp;D investment must be huge?</i><p>Rather than haggling over what constitutes a &quot;huge&quot; investment, let&#x27;s generalize the question a bit.  True or false: we&#x27;d be better off if everything that <i>could be</i> patented under the present USPTO rules <i>was</i> patented.<p>If your answer is &quot;true,&quot; we&#x27;re done here.<p>If your answer is &quot;false,&quot; then you agree with me that the current criteria for patent grants are inappropriate and counterproductive.<p><i>Because that&#x27;s not the case with tons of patents -- some are just accidental inventions, like the fabled 3M&#x27;s post-it notes.</i><p>Correct, and we need to ask what we got in return for allowing 3M to patent Post-It notes.  If something is that trivial and that inexpensive to develop, then there&#x27;s no need to incentivize it.  We already have an institution called a &quot;market&quot; that&#x27;s well-suited to sort out the winners and losers.