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Comment by littlecranky67 | Hacker News Reader

A monopoly is not defined by the possiblity that there are other products available for purchase on the market, but rather how many products have been purchased and are in use.

Using your reasoning, Microsoft could never have had a monopoly on Windows because you always could have bought a Mac.

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That latter definition is in fact a reasonable counter-argument to Windows being a monopoly (people did buy Macs), and that's why Microsoft got in trouble for the deals they cut to try and crush Netscape, not for making a more popular OS than Apple did.

You can't define a monopoly as "your competitors aren't popular" because otherwise it'd be illegal to invent new product categories, as at the start you'd be the only player in the new space. You can't define it that way for another reason: it punishes success.

Monopolies are not illegal, so your argument is irrelevant.

FWIW the definition of a patent is a "time-limited monopoly on working an invention", so all new products that are patented are monopolies by definition.

As the sibling comment rightly says, monopolies are acceptable. But, as the EU clearly point out, a greater onus is put on monopolies to avoid abusing their monopoly power.

That would work if patents were enforceable but they really aren't. I can't see a company that (re)invented a new product category where no competitors emerged because of patents.

That is an extremely optimistic view of patents

A monopoly is exactly that. Mono means one. Thats the root of the word. What you are describing is a dominant position, which is completely different since its a relative definition.

You're mistaking the dictionary definition for the legal definition.

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