Re:Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project V...
by joe_the_user on Monday September 23, 2019 @02:24PM
(#21051877)
"Fair market competition" is the idea that products compete on their own merits, not that you can leverage your market position to destroy competitors.
This idea implies something akin to an implicit patent on every imaginable product "merit". But I should remind you that patents are not intended to be free market devices - rather, if a patent is granted, it is monopoly given in exchange for an individual describing their honest advancement of the craft. If Snap deserved a patent on their "business process", they could have stopped Facebook, if not, there's no reason that a deep pocketed entity shouldn't look at modest innovations and copy them. The alternative is every small innovation is controlled by a petty dictator, blocking all progress.
This idea implies something akin to an implicit patent on every imaginable product "merit". But I should remind you that patents are not intended to be free market devices - rather, if a patent is granted, it is monopoly given in exchange for an individual describing their honest advancement of the craft. If Snap deserved a patent on their "business process", they could have stopped Facebook, if not, there's no reason that a deep pocketed entity shouldn't look at modest innovations and copy them. The alternative is every small innovation is controlled by a petty dictator, blocking all progress.