[jaimex2]

The original has paid for the r&d, advertising and taken all the risk involved with launching a new product.

Copy doesn't have to factor any of that in and can shop around for the cheapest labour to get the copy done. As stated in the article even the supplier has started a copy.

Consumers still lose out if a product never gets created in the first place because its too much hassle to deal with copying.

[jessriedel]

> The original has paid for the r&d,

As discussed in other comments, the "original" product from the author is in fact itself a copycat. Furthermore, for this product the author has mostly been using copyright and trademarks, not patents, suggesting that R&D was not their key input.

[andi999]

Patents is the R, copyright the D in R&D.

[jessriedel]

The common use of the term "R&D" does not back you up on that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_and_development

[mordae]

Yesss, battle about who gets to mold little pieces of plastic for kids to play with.