You have to resort to trade secrets anyway. There's never going to be a legal system that is dynamic enough to move with the whims of a collaborative technology team.

   > So I think it's a tough problem and society should err on the
   > side of benefits for the inventor.

I tried to explain above - supporting patents doesn't err on behalf of the inventor. It errs against them. Patents granted to non-inventors and used to hit inventors over the head with.

There's a great book I recommend, "Against Intellectual Monopoly". It goes back to the original patent on the steam engine, and what a bad deal for innovation and innovators that was, and proceeds from there.