This seems to deny the "mine" behavior. I like my lawnmower, and feel better knowing that no squatters have slept in my bed. As to how I would know, my security company would have photos.
"Mine" is a recognition of scarcity. If you can conjure at will a lawnmower that is identical in every way to yours, can it be said to be scarce? As for the squatter, I agree that he did violate your property rights. He deprived you of the use of your property (regardless of the fact that you weren't, at the time, using it), so he should leave some additional compensation. But that is exactly why it is a bad comparison to IP. you're not being deprived of anything when someone uses your invention.
I am being deprived of my rightful slice of market share.
Hardly. Does Folgers deprive Starbucks of their "rightful slice of market share"? Or vice-versa?
In Canada, generic drug makers are not allowed to use the IP that big pharma made for 15 years after the the drug hits market. If one has to spend many millions to develop something that can be exploited by someone else at almost zero cost, what incentive to invest in innovation?
You didn't answer the question.
Folgers v/s Starbucks? You can do better. How about M$ v/s Apple v/s Samsung? Android v/s Apple?
Both companies provide coffee to consumers. And you still didn't answer the question.
However: There is powerful incentive to be first in the marketplace. The more complex your product, the longer it will take to reverse engineer it. That time period, from introduction to the first appearance of reverse-engineered copies, is your limited-term monopoly. Your main complaint seems to boil down to the argument that you don't consider that to be long enough, and we should arbitrarily set some additional time to artificially impose a monopoly.
Correct, I think it should be long enough to pay for R/D, implementation/production, marketing, plus a certain period of pure profit.
As far as coffee suppliers go, they both compete for market share, like car, wheat or phone providers. As long as they leave each other's IP rights alone, all is good. A new idea should be given the chance to provide profit for its developer, otherwise, if the developer has no chance for profit, why develop something in the first place?
