I don&#x27;t mean in the form that they exist today but the original ideal behind them: that they can protect someone with little to no money from being steam rolled when they come up with a new invention &#x2F; novel idea that is taken by the bigger guys. At least this felt like the original intent of patents but it simply can&#x27;t work like that today.<p>And yeah owning an idea is terrible. It would have been nice to at least be required to demonstrate the idea being patented. But that opens all sorts of issues.