Certainly it could be, I would like to see some proper study done into it, but it’s probably borderline impossible.

Conversely patents are somewhat unobtainable by the average Joe, I think I saw it costing somewhere in the region of 25-50k to patent something by the time you factor in the cost of a decent patent lawyer.

Maybe a 10-15 year patent period with lower barrier to entry would be a good thing.