The problem is that even if there are alternative ways, it's not always profitable to find them. One clear example is drug prices. The price to manufacture a dr

The problem is that even if there are alternative ways, it's not always profitable to find them. One clear example is drug prices. The price to manufacture a drug is tiny compared to the cost to develop a new one, so of someone has a patent on a drug that cures a disease, it's not worth anyone else's time to develop a different drug. Getting your drug approved will take years (for good reason), and at the end, you have a product that competes with another company, where instead you could just develop a different drug and get your own monopoly. As such, there are product monopolies on pretty much all drugs to treat rare diseases.