Because they have the good patents now, and the way to beat them is to get better ideas than theirs, not to recycle the ideas that they have. A patentless system would favour big companies even more.

The market will be responsible for them getting better ideas to beat the big companies ... 

A patentless system makes it even easier for other businesses to enter a specific segment of a market ... 

It is the smaller businesses that would benefit more from a patentless system when the bigger companies doing free R&D for them and that they often have the better ideas than what the small companies could ever hope to make ...

If Google and Small Company #A has acces to the same tech and ideas, one of those two companies are gonna crush the other like an ant. I'll give you a hint, it's not Small Company #A.

Besides, what you describe is exactly the less innovative market I described. Startups would do nothing but siphon off the R&D of big companies, and they wouldn't dare to try an innovate, because the big boys could use their idea and crush them. With patents, both the big and the small players have to do their best to innovate continuously, aka more good ideas and more innovation which is better for the consumer.

Exactly.  It would also allow for a bunch of cheap, low-quality knock-offs, like they have in China.  That would NOT be good.  Of course, on the flip side, patent trolls and patents that are too generic do need to be dealt with.  There should never be companies whose only source of income is from owning and enforcing patents.  Also, even if a company has a patent, if they are no longer, or never were, implementing that tech in one of there products, the patent needs to expire after a certain amount of months.

More good ideas will come from the market driving companies to push more innovation, not patents ... 

It is most likely that Google will beat Small Company #A regardless but a patent system in place only serves to oust them even faster than without a patent system ...

Small companies will continue to innovate regardless of whatever the bigger companies do since ALL businesses are looking for an opportunity to maximize on profits and innovating can only do that ...

Sharing ideas and knowledge can only be a good thing, not a bad thing ... 

Yea, you say that, now.  I'm sure you'd be singing a different tune if you or someone you knew came up with a great idea/invention, but the sec you tried to sell it you were ripped off by a big corporation.  In your world, you would have no legal recourse, then they would be free to make millions/billions off the idea, while you died penniless.  That's what happened in 100's/1000's of years ago.  That's why we came up with patents.  Yea, some abuse it, but it does more good than bad.  So, there's no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water.

I thought threads were supposed to have some observational/editorial aspect and not just be a simple copy/paste from another site. C'mon, Spurge, if this were a political/racial/religious thread your words would be all over it.

Well thank god I won't be running a business and I hardly sing different tunes when I'm mostly realist so thank god I can also except inequality ...

More good than bad, ehh ? Hmm, so was introducing more monopolies, Apple bullying their competitors, patent trolls, protecting bigger companies and hurting small businesses worth it ? 

Not only that but businesses from other sectors can't pitch in when patents can cost an upwards of billions to acquire rights too ...

Sooo much lost potential innovation from the above is lost I somewhat shriek about it ... 

The only winners when patents system is in place are the lawyers since their jobs bank on it and they get tons of money from every lawsuit ... 

If patent systems weren't in place then those patent lawyers would go back to been inventors rather than dealing with more technical lawsuits ... 

Except this isn't sharing for the sake of furthering knowledge, like it is in science, this is "sharing" of the kind where everyone are out to make the most money for themselves. People (especially small companies, since they have a competetive disadvantage) wouldn't dare to innovate, because the big boys could just use the exact same idea. It would be much smarter for them to let the big companies innovate, then just rip-off their idea. Thus you get fewer companies trying to anniovate, abd as a result, less innovation. BTW, if Small Company #A had access to better tech than Google, they'd have the competetive advantage, and thus a better chance to succeed than in a patentless world where they had access to the same tech.

But at the same time how would a small business overcome the R&D budget advantage a bigger company has ? Having no access to that very important patent to be competitive means that a smaller company is spending more time licking it's wounds than been encouraged to innovate more and they'd also have to take more safety measures too which can translate to doing less and less R&D ... 

Too many times I've seen small companies go in a downward spiral because they're getting shot down really hard by the bigger companies ... 

Smaller companies having access to the better ideas is hardly the case in the real world when you keep seeing practically the same logos or trademarks every decade while countless of the small businesses go out of business because they are unable to invest futher on new ideas ... 

Patents only serve to make it even harder to displace the bigger companies or allow for more disruption in the market place ...

The business world should be more vicious/competitive and a patentless system would do just that ...