The system of copyright worked very well to protect smaller entities in this regard.
Not to mention tivoization which trivially bypasses GPLv2.
in reality your licence is only as strong as your ability to enforce it.
As long as the little guy's patent can improve the process without stepping on any of the countless pre-existing patents manufacturers have accumulated. Now how often is that the case?
Except in the cases where manufacturers just stall the little guy in court for most of their life.
The more difficult and expensive it is to use, the more it will be the domain of those with more resources, and the more the small will be defenseless.
The answer is not to eliminate copyright or patents, but rather to make them simple and easy to apply for, defend, and find. The current bar is so high it favors the big guys only, and gives them leverage against smaller folks who can’t afford to even show up to defend themselves usually.
Or eliminate it entirely, but you’ll not be able to do that because Disney, Microsoft, Oracle, and the like would murder/compromise/destroy anyone who might be able to do that.
this is the same argument that patent proponents had, because patents protects the little guy.
And yet, most copyright enforcement occurs via large corporations who have an interest in doing so to further some other goal as part of a strategy to gain monopoly. Patents as well as copyright is but a tool, and any tool can be more powerfully wielded if the wielder is more powerful!
The little guy is better off without copyright imho (but that horse has already bolted).