Which is why we're all typing this on DEC machines running OS/2 on AOL internet with 3Com modems.
We have been running almost entirely Windows and Mac for over 20 years (at least in consumer land).
We have been running mostly Intel and nVidia for over 20 years.
We have been running mostly Chrome and maybe 2 others for 10 years.
We have 1 comprehensive social network (FB/Insta) for over 10 years.
We have 3/4 major internet providers and 4 wireless carriers - forever.
We have essentially 1 Search Engine.
We have 2 smartphone platforms for over 12 years.
... when there are 'new markets to be exploited' or a fundamental shift in a market (ie feature phones to smartphones) - new entrants have a chance, but outside of that, they don't as incumbents win relatively easily unless they get lazy.
Each of the major players above has been able to leverage their market power into domination.
IP is one of the few vectors of power for smaller companies (often the only vector) that stop these behemoths from wiping them out. Sadly, depending on the scenario, there are often few material IP protections to be had.
At the time people thought Microsoft was so dominant that most of the innovations of the past 20 years could not have happened, because Microsoft was a behemoth that would simply take over any competitors. But they lost on search, phones, browsers, etc.
I don't really see how it's different this time around. There is currently no company as dominant over the entire industry as Microsoft was in 2000, or as dominant as IBM was in 1980.
For every time a large company trolls a smaller one, there are 100 times one company decides not to infringe on some other work.
For example, I work with a hardware company that has patents. We freely send our products to larger competitors. Why? Because they know we have good IP, and were they to copy our approach, it would be a straightforward infringement on us, and it would risk their entire business.
Admittedly, we are luckily that infringement in this case would be fairly clear because that's not always the case.
Seems to me that certain industries like software are able to have so much startups and innovation because the legal system is just less effective at capturing and crippling them, despite heroic efforts.
MS keeps it's monopoly via market power, generally not IP protections (though partly).
MS is large enough vis-a-vis fragmented hardware vendors and distribution networks that it can do play all sorts of hardball. It has deeply entrenched sales channels in to the corporate world. Most significantly, it's a platform which means huge switching costs - and - it can use that platform as leverage into other spaces i.e. desktop software.
Take a moment to contemplate out how Coke and Pepsi (ostensibly commodities) can dominate their channels in a supposedly free market - it's a little bit similar.
Google's monopoly in search can be leveraged into all sorts of other areas.
IP laws are beneficial for 'either side' and of course they are abused willy nilly, but by and large, they are beneficial to a lot of small companies.
Weirdly, even Open Source is helped by IP laws - by 'turning them upside down' using 'copyleft', they wrestle the IP laws into their favour, as the means to 'protect' Open Source, if you will.
We are so wrapped up in software - consider physical things. Often, they have very long development cycles, very expensive. Also - huge operating capital requirements and capex as well. (Why do you think there are so few YC hardware companies?). Also - distribution networks are locked up and very different from software where it's almost direct.
It would be almost impossible to make a hardware company without IP protections, because those with market power would instantly commoditize the competition.
Many other businesses are a little bit similar: as soon as it's not 'pure software' then you realize how fragile new companies are.
For 'very new domains' (i.e. 'blue oceans') it's one thing, but most markets are not that.
Once you put your 'anything but software' hat on for a bit, and see how those companies sit in the value chain, IP looks a little different. That understanding can map to software.
If anything, we need better, more nuanced IP laws, not to get rid of them.
You're comparing beverage companies with a market share of 30-40 percent (or less depending how you narrowly you define competitors) to Microsoft with a market share ranging from 70-90 percent. Note microsoft was able to come from behind and succeed mostly before the days of software patents.
Open source is perversely helped by IP laws because it's the only way to create an alternative that can survive. Like bitcoin being anonymous, versus e-gold which was shut down by the govt. Great except we have to wait for hobbyists and others with free time to waste before competing ideas can get implemented.
As for hardware being worse than software without IP protection, well it sure is worse than software with IP protection. So I guess it'll stay consistent. Maybe the lesson is the nature of hardware is to be commoditized, so you need to put your value in the bundled software.
This way we get the worst of all possible worlds.
Had we been more desperate and not using other peoples money we would have started negotiating with car bombs as our Eastern European engineer suggested.
This is one of the most absurd and backwards claims I've seen on this site. Large companies are members of patent pools that prevent them from being sued by other members, whereas small companies without a large IP portfolio can't do anything without inadvertently violating someone's patent.
When BigCo comes calling with their stack of patents demanding a license or profit share, you break out your few key patents and demand one back from them. BigCo has a lot more to lose compared to SmallCo.
SmallCo has little or no profit and little revenue so BigCo gets no money from them for patent infringement. BigCo has a bunch of money. If SmallCo has good patents BigCo will go away or make SmallCo a deal to avoid millions of dollars in damages or license fees BigCo would owe SmallCo for infringement.
IP litigators will take such cases on contingency.
If you don't have good IP you are a commodity.
IP is one of the very few areas wherein smaller companies can have any hope of leverage over larger ones.
That small companies are blocked from some other patents is an issue, but a lesser one - and it applies to big and small alike.
"whereas small companies without a large IP portfolio can't do anything without inadvertently violating someone's patent." - is plainly false.
Obviously, companies continue to innovate.
Large companies have much more to protect, and far from 'being safe' - IP laws make them more risk averse if anything because they put a lot more at risk than smaller one's.
Google has outright banned their employees from even downloading MongoDB etc. due to lack of clarity over licensing. Without IP protections, Google wouldn't care one bit what they did.
Large companies play against each other mostly in the domain of competition, without IP laws they would step on every smaller company like little ants, without any concern.
Leverage over another isn't the only way to compete.
If there was no IP, smaller companies would have alternatives such as blatantly copying the larger companies' better product features, while being nimbler to innovate with those ideas, and to blend features from different companies into a new product.
Not every small company would be good at that. But some would. Some smaller companies would have more ability to out-innovate incumbents.
Of course that already happens, but it could happen more freely without IP.
The smaller companies would still have the problem of being noticed, selling their products, and getting investor interest (which I'm told IP helps with), but those problems aren't new.
A company with 100x the resources of another, never needs to worry about IP or innovating, because it just plucks off other people's work, integrates into it's own machine and receives the market surpluses, risk free.
So yes - by getting tons of young people to drink the koolaid 'work hard for startups' knowing the surpluses, if any, will largely be concentrated in the hands of literally 5-10 behemoths, the Valley has played a neat trick.
IP rules favour the little guy: it's how they can keep their innovation by being taken from much larger companies. IP filed by large corps is often protective in nature, so as to protect themselves from trolls and obvious copy-cats.