And yet somehow the result has been a vast acceleration in the rate of improvement of robotic vacuums. It isn't evident that we are in the right here.

The result is also all of the innovative product ideas that never see the light of day because two weeks after launch there’d be a Chinese knock off on the market for half the price making it impossible to recoup R&D.

That’s a big reason behind the push to SaaS and server based solutions.

  > there’d be a Chinese knock off on the market for half the price

cheaper, faster, better... sounds like... innovation?

What about copying someone else’s design, making minor improvements (often regressions due to incomplete RE), and having a lower cost basis sounds like innovation to you?

well, i guess it depends... there are cases where something is totally copied 1-1 then maybe costs cuts are in labor, or they are in quality

in the case of worse quality, wouldn't the market just filter out such inferior products via competition? same with labor practices and bad pr from that.

additionally, if the 'minor improvements' are what people want (sometimes as a trade-off to quality) then thats what the market has signaled it prefers...

if the originating company doesn't meet that preference or demand, why should some admittedly state-provided protection (some might say monopoly) of intellectual property be able to protect them from competitors who will?

Facebook stealing from snapchat. Youtube stealing from instagram who stole from tiktok , stealing from vine etc etc. I don't think it stopped other people from taking risks.

This is the moral theory behind patent laws, and I’ve never seen definitive evidence that it actually helps, and a lot of examples where IP law completely hampers innovation or at least adds layers of bureaucracy.

I’m glad we don’t have to deal with this issue as much in software. I can’t imagine that a world where all the companies actually tried to enforce their software patents would be better for anyone but the lawyers.

As a consumer, I don't give a damn about these companies copying each other, I just want better products. But yeah, if I worked at iRobot I would be annoyed.

Well, it looks like that didn’t stop these guys from innovating, even though it was stolen after.