[izacus]

This whole concept of idea ownership is pretty damaging to progress - most progress in 20th century was seeing several companies compete in same space and take ideas from competitors, iterating on them and integrating them in new, improved products.

Imagine if one car company could "own" the idea of blind spot monitoring. Or navigation. Or rear view camera.

[AngryData]

I would go for much simpler things. Like a differential gear on your drive wheels. Without it, you either have a solid axle that literally drags and squeals your tires on every turn, or you only get one drive wheel so your car has a permanent biased to turn one direction and not the other. Or direct injection which would give a permanent advantage in fuel efficiency over competitors.

[nicbou]

On the other hand, there is little incentive to spend a billion dollars developing a one dollar product if it gets copied by everyone else. It can incentivize stagnation.

[simplify]

I imagine that scenario applies to very few industries and should not dictate the norms of others.

[reb]

On still another hand, essentially placing a $1,000,000,000 barrier to entry on product innovation can incentivize stagnation as well.