Are trade secrets really worse? My (uninformed, anecdotal, unsubstantiated) intuition is that reverse engineering, or even just the knowledge that something is possible, ensures that trade secrets are no barrier to progress. While patents definitely seem like a barrier.

If company is providing a service instead of selling products then reverse engineering is much much harder or not possible at all.

Example: Are you going to reverse self-driving code from a vehicle giving you are ride? Or a server behind an API?

No, but knowing a solution exists makes finding the solution orders of magnitude easier.

I used to think Patents had their uses.

I looked into just the fees to file a patent, and it's for middle class, upper class folks, institutions, and companies.

The poor guy tinkering around in his wood shed is not filing patents.

Maybe not throwing out all patents us a good idea? I don't know, but an American citizen (low income) all fees shouid be eliminated.

I would like to see a limit on patents anyone can file, or a graduated fee structure?

1 patent free. (low income. $300 everyone else) 2 patent $500 3 patent $500,000 4 patent $1,000,000,000

This would at least limit those guys patenting round corners?