The point of patents isn't just to protect you from theft. It's to grant you a monopoly on the invention in exchange for publishing details about it (thereby a

The point of patents isn't just to protect you from theft. It's to grant you a monopoly on the invention in exchange for publishing details about it (thereby allowing others to build on your invention). Trade secrets law protects you against theft. Multiple people having the same idea doesn't actually mean anything - the person who makes the public disclosures of its existence is the one who gets the patent. No, you don't necessarily need to spend a lot of resources or even have a "research group" to invent something completely novel, and the price of research is actually a lot lower than you think if you aren't hiring people. For example, you can make a new silicon chip to prove that your new circuit works for under $10,000. A new electronic device of some other kind is only a few thousand. Software (for the few remaining fields where you can get a software patent) is pretty much free to develop.