You have a few conflated arguments here.<p>Open source is relatively orthogonal to the patent system. There is some overlap in that they both require disclosure, but the fundamental incentives are different, so you should expect different software to be developed.<p>Improvements to patents can be patented in their own right, by different owners. I agree that it is significantly more onerous than open source.<p>Scummy as Martin Shkreli was, he jacked the price up on a generic... Not something under patent. It just takes time&#x2F;money to certify that new generic lines are manufactured  to FDA standards, do he had a temporary monopoly.<p>Lawsuits against &quot;infringing&quot; software are relatively easy, and expensive to defend against. That is independent of whether the defendant patented the software or not. This is more the nature of our legal system, and one could argue that the patent system should handle this stuff internally. However, I think the legal system would be hard to improve upon without causing other problems, like making it difficult to challenge for legitimate infringement.<p>All in all, I agree a lot of questionable patents get issued. I just think the reality is far more subtle.