>Virtually everything humans create or “discover” is an inevitability.
Even though it's inevitable that someone will invest a lot of time to get us better TFT displays in form of IPS, it's very much favorable that he can reap some reward for it.
It's a bit of a gamble and is therefore supplanted by the trade secret and research grant systems, still it's a useful incentive to do cool stuff.
Especially in the distant past, there have been many patents that were really valuable and their inventors deserved to be rewarded.
The main problem is that today patents are granted far too easily. Most patents contain in their claims only things that any competent professional could discover independently after a few hours of thinking about how to solve a problem.
Other claims are for methods that have been known for a long time, but they were not applied for various reasons, e.g. of cost or efficiency, to the applications described in the patent. Then some unrelated technological progress happened, which may not be mentioned at all in the patent, which suddenly enabled the extension of the application domain of the old method, and then someone quickly filed a patent for the new combination of old methods.
Other claims are far too general and cover all the ways that everyone could list about how to solve a problem, even if most of them are not practical at present and the inventor would not be able to demonstrate any functional implementation, but they are inserted in the patent claims for the case that someone will discover in the future a suitable technology, when it will become possible to claim that it infringes the patent.
Many patents are just reformulations of much older patents, from decades ago, perhaps filed in other countries, but they use such an obfuscated language that it is difficult to determine that in fact the different patents claim the same things.
I have read many patents, but the most recent they are, the less likely it is to find in them anything that I consider innovative or that would justify in any way to consider the patent as valid.
Nevertheless, few individuals or companies would be able to bear the expenses and risks of trying to invalidate patents, so there are many examples when inferior technologies have been used for decades in order to circumvent bogus patents.
Moreover, the days when most patent owners used the patents as a direct source of revenue are long in the past. Today few patent owners are willing to license them at fair and non-discriminatory prices. Most use the patents only as a means to prevent competition.
There is no "he" who will reap the reward. The reward all goes to the share holders and executives of the company which ends up owning the patent, not the individual or individuals who comes up with the thing which can be patented.
The researcher individuals will be paid their salary and their jobs' existence depends solely on ability of the shareholders to protect their investment.
Exactly, and that's my point! The individual who does the invention gets a normal salary which they would've gotten anywhere doing anything (or, at best, a slightly higher salary than others doing similar work), and the people who reap the reward are the shareholders and executives.
That's worse an understanding of economics than I'd expect here. The fact that fruit of research and development is protected investment creates research jobs. Without patent protection, shareholders and executives would hire fewer people and overall progress would be slower.
But they are, even if it's not as direct as you like. The company/inventor is the patent holder, which benefits the inventor either directly or indirectly.
You're making it out like the individuals do not benefit from company's success. I'm saying that's not true, the continued existence of the company is a benefit to the individual.
The individual benefits a teeny tiny little bit from the company's success, but the individual is not getting rich from it. The idea that the inventor is significantly enriched by the patent system is a fantasy; the reality is that the inventor maybe has a slightly higher salary than they otherwise would, while the investors and executives are enriched. I don't know how many times I need to say this before it sinks in.
Even though it's inevitable that someone will invest a lot of time to get us better TFT displays in form of IPS, it's very much favorable that he can reap some reward for it.
It's a bit of a gamble and is therefore supplanted by the trade secret and research grant systems, still it's a useful incentive to do cool stuff.