> As a meta-item on this discussion, it appears that we have a disagreement of value systems.

I agree :-)

> I'd recommend "Sequential Innovation, Patents, and Imitation" (http://www.researchoninnovation.org/patent.pdf), among others.

Personally, I would not recommend anything by Bessen without significant cross-checking. Many of the author's works have been shown to have poor methodology. As I recall (it's been a while since I read it), this particular paper presents a theoretical model with little empirical evidence to back it up. Additionally, it posits that R&D intensity does not increase with more patenting by firms, something that later empirical studies refute.

> Evaluating the positive effects requires not only identifying an invention/product, but determining whether the invention/product would still have been published/created in the hypothetical scenario in which patents did not exist.

That is one way to do so, but that is a narrow view. At the macro level, this can be shown by the amount of investment into R&D activity that is evidently incentivized by patents. More money and resources funneled towards innovative activity enables more innovation. While it may not serve as direct proof of specific innovations, it is obvious that without resources being invested into R&D, many innovations would not have occurred sooner or at all. Would Microsoft pour billions into MSR if it did not hope to profit from it at some point in the future?

> The meta-study covered three points: 1) efficacy at promoting innovation (one genuine purpose of the patent system), for which it failed to provide any direct evidence (things that would not have happened otherwise) and could only fall back on economic claims (rewarding things that were done; see (3)); 2) efficacy at promoting publication (another genuine purpose of the patent system), which it rather conclusively refuted; and 3) economic incentives and monetary evaluation of patents, which as a non-goal of the patent system (only a means), is irrelevant when evaluating whether a patent system should exist.

The goal of a patent system is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Promoting disclosure, as is capturing rewards, encouraging financing and increasing innovation through forced work-arounds, are all post-hoc rationalizations of that clause rather than explicit goals. It is incorrect to say economic incentives are a non-goal. Insofar as it diverts more resources towards R&D, patent systems evidently do well.

> ... I don't consider the patent system's definition of "novel" the only measure of a technology's inventiveness or usefulness.

Agreed. I have a number of issues with the current implementation of patent systems, but not with the fundamentals.

> PGP, GCC, WebRTC, etc.

Thanks for the examples. I'll note that often what was prevented was re-implementation of existing technologies available on the market, and nothing prevented the research and development of follow-on innovation, only its distribution to the market, which ostensibly would also have been allowed if a license was taken. Sure that would have increased costs of downstream applications, but why should products not pay their fair dues to the upstream innovations that made them possible, even if the products themselves are given away for free?

In the case of MP3s, patents were directly responsible for spurring the then-languishing development of Vorbis, which many consider a better technology.

> Both of which I'd hold up as examples for "why we shouldn't have software patents". In particular, if you see i4i as a good example, then I'd deeply question your evaluation of value.

Both of them were operating companies whose technology was ripped off by Microsoft. I don't see what's so bad about i4i - they were a practicing entity that filled a business niche that MS ignored for years and then decided to just take over once i4i proved it was valuable.

> But in both cases, so what? Neither of those contradicts my statement that "I've never once seen a patent lawsuit in which I could muster the slightest sympathy for the plaintiff or the slightest belief that they deserve anything".

So this was not a strawman after all, and I guess therein lies our disagreement. I believe these inventors took enormous risks and caused an undeniable leap forward in their respective fields, and should have reaped proportional rewards. They certainly did well enough, but not nearly as well as they should have. Different value systems, I suppose.