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> intellectual property laws are the only thing stopping Big Company A from just cloning Small Company B's product

Is that really the case? Does it work? Isn't Instagram basically cloning TIkTok right now? and cloned Snap before that?

Apple with Alfred, Spotlight, F.lux etc are also examples. Seems like for software, either patents aren't utilized or simply can't be enforced.

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Instragram/TikTok/Snap aren't exactly novel ideas, the only valuable thing about them are the brands (also intellectual property but not what we are talking about).

I only know VMWare from its days as virtualization software. I would put money on them having had a bunch of patents on the specific techniques they used.

Software patents sometimes work out, sometimes not. If I were king of the world I wouldn't get rid of them but narrow the scope down to protecting specific implementations, none of this "Buying stuff of the internet" pantenting that invested the 00s.

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