Now image if there weren't patents. The larger entities would simply wait for their smaller competitors, copy their products and then use their capital to more efficiently/cheaply manufacture/market them.

edit: While also maintaining massive private documentation stores that further give them a moat. Patents are public so you at least know what someone did 20 years ago even if you're a one person shop. Without them you'd be in trouble unless you had access to a large companies massive and very private internal invention documentation store.

Larger entities have lawyers and can afford more of them. It doesn't protect the little guys so much as allow larger entities monopoly power.

Patents are by themselves not a business model. They merely buy a seat at the negotiation table. Leverage is another matter entirely.