Copyright is different from Patents, but both are forms of IP protection. If Entity A has copyright on a application nothing is stopping Entity B from writing

Copyright is different from Patents, but both are forms of IP protection. If Entity A has copyright on a application nothing is stopping Entity B from writing a competing application, they just have to invest their time and effort into the application like Entity A did. If Entity B thinks they can eat Entities A lunch with a different pricing model / cheaper price they are free to do so. If Entity A has patent protection on a application then no one else can make the "same application"* (without licensing the patent) and Entity A has a monopoly on that market for the life of the patent (upto 20 years iirc). * This would all be down to how the patent is written, and personally I am against software patents, but patents can often be bypassed even if that means that the bypassed version could be incompatible with the patented version. I also think that the length of copyright protection is too long, but I don't think it should be abolished either.