It could be, however, if you limited patent lifetime to reasonable market turnover rates. Say, a year or two. It's enough to establish the brand, and after that, competition is healthy.

Patents were meant to be a carrot - a way to enrich society with inventions by hacking the market to incentivize it. Instead, companies now are given a free carrot factory, so they can (and do) show middle finger to society and profit off inventions while keeping them away from people for a very long time.