&gt; That&#x27;s what the OP asked: what 5-10y software research, which we currently benefit from, would not have happened were it not for patents?<p>First of all that is explicitly <i>not</i> what OP asked - he asked:<p>&gt;&gt; To rephrase, what exactly do we lose out if patents didn&#x27;t exist?<p>&gt; In medicine, this is extremely easy to answer. Hence why the vast majority of software patents opponents are fine with those.<p>Then it seems you&#x27;ve answered your own question? Obviously the patent being in software as opposed to being in medicine doesn&#x27;t make any distinction -- since there is no logical way to qualify that criteria into a rule that can be unequivocally applied; that the patent system is greatly beneficial in other major areas of research (and supposing you admit the net benefit to be greater than the net harm) makes it inevitable in software - whether you like it or not.