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Patents is an agreement with the government and a form of intellectual property which gives an inventor/creator a 20 year monopoly over their idea/invention as long as they disclose it. A patent doesn't give a right to make or sell the invention but does give the right to choose who can and can not make your invention or use your idea. There are many reasons for granting patents. One of the reasons is to protect the inventor from losing out on the benefits of his/her work if a larger company finds out about his/her idea and mass produces it without giving them anything. Another reason may be in order to spur innovation, because if an inventor can be convinced that their idea is safe to let other people know about then maybe they will make it public and allow others to build on to and improve on the idea. I think that patents should be granted as they do help inventors keep control over their ideas and help preserve their work while not harming the abilities of others to innovate on that idea (as long as the inventor likes the innovator ;)) I think they are beneficial to society as long as the patent office is working as if is supposed to. From some of the patent troll articles it is described as if the patent office is giving patents to ideas not deserving and is overall very poor in settling disputes (Patent Trolls). The difficulty with software patents is that they create more patent trolls and this again stems from problems within the patent office. I think that if there were to be clear guidelines for applying for, evaluating, and managing patents in all industries there will be less problems and will allow for further innovation. The system is broken and needs to be fixed. The system has been around for a  long time and has probably not evolved at all as all the inventions have evolved the industries they are in.