_used to_. There is now an entire profession of writing patents in such
a way that even when they expire you cannot possibly reconstruct what they
were on about in full.
In the current world trade secrets are less evil than patents. If someone
discovers something clever and patents it then they get a little piece
of paper granting them monopoly power. These are then traded to create a
little cabal of vendors who 'compete' in a very minimal fashion and lock
the entire market down while ripping customers off
In a world driven by trade secrets we occasionally lose a good idea but
something not truely obvious will be rediscovered refined and improved
Alan
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