alt Hacker NewsThat was the stated purpose of a patent.
The modern purposes of patents seem to have shifted a long way from that.
I wonder how much of ADSL's advantage is due to trade secrets (spread across many vendors) versus how much has been published as patents.
>The modern purposes of patents seem to have shifted a long way from that
I'm not sure if that's true, or if it's more that 1) we hear more about the more egregious stuff and/or 2) something was lost in translation with that stated purpose when the world went digital.