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 ex

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.