Patents then, patents now…

Patents then:

Patents grant you an exclusive right on an invention for a limited time, so you can produce and sell products around said invention to have a fair return on investment on your invention, depending on the success of your products. If you fail within the time, it’s someone else’s turn.

Patents now:

Patents grant you an exclusive right on some vague idea for a limited time, so you can sit around waiting for someone else to do the really hard work of producing a successful product around a seemingly similar but more concrete idea and then you get a return on invest by suing the person/company who did the hard part.

I am surely not the first to post something like this, but it just felt right today…