alt Hacker NewsThere are solid economic arguments that they were never the right model, even "back in The Day": http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.ht...
Patents are government granted monopolies on ideas. The case for them is that you need the carrot of a monopoly to incentivize innovators (empirically untrue). The case against them is that government mandated monopolies immediately dampen all subsequent innovation until expiry (empirically true across industries throughout history).
How about the delayed electrification in Britain? It seems that elswhere it began in the late 1870s, but there was no major electrification in Britain before the 20th century. I thought maybe it was also because of some patent obstruction?