Disclosure is to Patents as Perjury is to Law: Better to Say Nothing

We throw our hat into the ring and declare that we too shall be damned if patent system defenders aren't being disingenuous when they trot out the idea that patents exist to encourage "disclosure" rather than to defend innovative propriety. It's delusory ivory-tower silliness.

From Techdirt:

"There's a simple response to that ... If there's economic benefit to keeping an idea secret, and the creator of that idea knows that he or she can keep it secret for greater than the length of the patent, then there's still no incentive to disclose. They'll simply keep the idea as a secret, because the economic benefit of it being a trade secret is much greater than the value of the patent."

While disclosure meant something in the past, it's much harder today to imagine scenarios where this remains the case. Intellectual Property is a world of speculative, strategic civil actions built on deliberately vague, incomplete and imprecise patent applications: it's a chess game played by huge corporations in a legal world which would be alien to the concerns and intent of those who framed the relevant laws.

In short, the modern business of defending I.P. practically mandates that "inventors" say as little as possible about their invention, and research and disclose as little as possible about anything similar, so as to avoid any liability implicit in such knowledge.

Can We Get Rid Of The Disclosure Myth For Patents? [Techdirt]