>The original intent of the patent system was to give inventors a leg up to commercialize their idea before they can be bullied out of the market by large competitors.
Almost... I think there is a subtle difference in what the intent was/is.
The point of the patent system is to incentivize inventors to make their creations available to the public. The time-limited monopoly to their invention (the patent) is the incentive. But you need to make enough details public to get the patent so that someone else can also take advantage of the invention. This is the public benefit... eventually, the public has access to an invention.
So, yes, the idea is to give companies a head start to commercialize an idea, but that's not the reason in and of itself. The reason is to make the invention available to the public, so that the public can benefit from the invention. And after a few years, it will be freely available. The limited monopoly is a financial incentive to keep the company working on the idea. Yes, it's a barrier to competitors, but it's also a potential reward for developing the idea.
In your case, I think the system worked (and Bayh-Dole in general works). Even though the company ultimately failed, the company had an incentive to try and commercialize the invention. This could have benefited the public by having access to a product that didn't exist before. But, even if the company fails in the market, after a certain amount of time, the public still has the patented information.
Really, the idea behind Bayh-Dole (which created these University-based IP systems) was to get inventions and data out of universities and into the public-domain. Otherwise, there would be billions in research that would be sitting on a shelf somewhere, or mentioned in a paper, but never used to benefit the public. Without that patent incentive, would your company ever have been formed? Would the research ever been commercialized? Likely not.
You won't get any arguments from me that the current system isn't broken. I personally believe that we'd get a lot farther if every claim on a patent had to be "reduced to practice", that is -- actually done. I think change alone this would help to get rid of trolls from the system.
But I don't think it would be better if we didn't have patents at all. So many things are currently protected by trade secrets and not disclosed. Imagine if it were all kept secret... I don't think that would benefit the public interest. And that was the original goal -- benefiting the public.
Almost... I think there is a subtle difference in what the intent was/is.
The point of the patent system is to incentivize inventors to make their creations available to the public. The time-limited monopoly to their invention (the patent) is the incentive. But you need to make enough details public to get the patent so that someone else can also take advantage of the invention. This is the public benefit... eventually, the public has access to an invention.
So, yes, the idea is to give companies a head start to commercialize an idea, but that's not the reason in and of itself. The reason is to make the invention available to the public, so that the public can benefit from the invention. And after a few years, it will be freely available. The limited monopoly is a financial incentive to keep the company working on the idea. Yes, it's a barrier to competitors, but it's also a potential reward for developing the idea.
In your case, I think the system worked (and Bayh-Dole in general works). Even though the company ultimately failed, the company had an incentive to try and commercialize the invention. This could have benefited the public by having access to a product that didn't exist before. But, even if the company fails in the market, after a certain amount of time, the public still has the patented information.
Really, the idea behind Bayh-Dole (which created these University-based IP systems) was to get inventions and data out of universities and into the public-domain. Otherwise, there would be billions in research that would be sitting on a shelf somewhere, or mentioned in a paper, but never used to benefit the public. Without that patent incentive, would your company ever have been formed? Would the research ever been commercialized? Likely not.