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     7 years ago 

    But a company could take an open source invention and patent it.

    But how is this possible if it is already existing? It's not the companies invention so they shouldn't be able to patent it!

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       7 years ago 

      A patent gives its owner the right to exclude others from
      making, using, and selling the claimed invention. Thus,
      patent rights give a patentee great control over who uses
      his invention. In contrast, the basic idea behind distributing
      software under an Open Source license is that anyone
      should be able to view and use the “source code” of the
      computer program and modify it for his own purposes.
      (The source code is the human readable version of the
      software.) The author of the program must make the source
      code available to others. Anyone can modify the source
      code without obtaining permission from the author. A
      business decision to distribute software under an Open
      Source license affects how the author of the software may
      be able to use his patent rights, but does not affect whether
      he can or should apply for patent protection. A business
      decision to release software under an open source license
      (or to incorporate such software in a proprietary product)
      may grant certain patent licenses to people who receive the
      software, and the patent owner cannot control who these
      receivers will be.

      https://www.fenwick.com/FenwickDocuments/Patent_Rights.pdf

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