Who Needs a Patent For This Web Thing?

Tim Berners-Lee, who created the first internet browser (1990) and the term World Wide Web, decided that if he patented it, it would never take off. He got the idea from attempting to organize his notes along the lines of a Victorian encyclopedia his parents had, called Enquire Within. He wrote hypertext software that allowed him to link ideas using text as a jumping off point to data held elsewhere. Of course, all his friends told him “it’ll never take off.”