Anyway, patents don't require that nobody else be working on the same thing you are, quite the opposite: patents are designed to get everyone working on this new invention, by publishing it.
They seem extremely poorly designed for this goal.
Edit: Just as an example. Our company had one of the lawyers come in and talk about patents in our office for a couple hours one day. They wanted to encourage us to file them for any work we might be doing. One of the first things he told us was to not ever search through existing patents for any reason whatsoever.
Has anyone ever tried reading through patents for implementation details? They are so vague (it's like technical writing translated by lawyers to be purposely vague) that it's completely useless.
The vast majority of times, there is nothing in the patent that can't be learned from just interacting with the patented object.
Especially given that the term of patent is 20 years. In the case of software, it's often the case that technology will have moved so far in 20 years that the invention will no longer be particularly useful.
They seem extremely poorly designed for this goal.
Edit: Just as an example. Our company had one of the lawyers come in and talk about patents in our office for a couple hours one day. They wanted to encourage us to file them for any work we might be doing. One of the first things he told us was to not ever search through existing patents for any reason whatsoever.