What should be patent-able is what could have been kept a secret

Mark Shuttleworth makes a simple statement on techcrunch that I like about what kind of patents should be approved: “You should only be able to patent those things you could keep secret,”... “People have become confused, and think that a patent is incentive to create at all.” Patents where created to award sharing knowledge about inventions above keeping secrets. The fact that the author of the article is confused about this fact being a mere opinion of Shuttleworth is telling of the current situation.