"Why is this out in the public?"

An AP story detailing offers from private collectors to buy an antique fortune-telling machine now owned by Montana ends with the paragraph:

"A lot of these collectors, they come and say the same thing: 'Why is this out in the public? Why don't you just take the money and have a collector restore it the way it should be restored and have it in his private collection?' Well, nobody would ever see it" said Peterson, whose position also was eliminated in the cutbacks.

This is part of the calculus of patent law rarely discussed by patent law academics: the benefit to the public of "public disclosure" of ideas. Patents are "patent", as distinct from "latent." They are there for all to see and to learn from.