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I strongly disagree. Without patents, something like the Subminimal Foamer kickstarter would have been impossible. That was one guy inventing a new way to make milk foam and then commercializing it. Without patents, Amazon.com would probably have been flooded with fakes before he finished raising money for the first prototype.

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Great. Apple patented a rectangle (https://www.theverge.com/2012/11/7/3614506/apple-patents-rec...), some dude patented a way to update a sports game (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/january-stupid-patent-...). I am not even getting into the whole patent trolling and companies suing each other because they are infringing upon each other's patents and then settling.

But no, for all the evil patents are we must have them, because some guy found a new way to make milk foam. Jesus ducking christ hacker news, this is almost as funny as Paul Graham writing an essay about why VC is great.

First off, I just really like milk foam with my coffee.

But mainly, my intent was to point out that patents might be a necessary evil to fight off copycats. Without that protection, I cannot imagine how any hardware startup could be successful, because the established players will always have the factories, tools, and experience so that they can scale up faster as soon as a new desired product is found.

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