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I'll go one step further and say that the whole concept of patents is not only unfair, it's ineffective at what it supposedly tries to achieve (fostering innovation).

For every monetary incentive of developing something new, there are 10 obstacles because of patent law. Patents are a hindrance more than an aid.

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Maybe so, but the alternative effectively means innovation has zero value. Why would I bother researching how to make a new product when I could just copy an existing one? Oh sure, I could tweak a thing here or there to make sure it's not exactly the same, but entire R&D divisions would just be cut from most corporations if the only value to innovating was that you got there first and ended up having (at most) a year before some other company disassembled your product and recreated it, selling it just above cost. Furthermore, if this was common practice, consumers would know that waiting a while would always lead to a knock-off product being available at huge discount, so even during that initial lead time sales would be impacted.

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