Without intellectual property, why would anyone ever acquire a startup? Just copy it or poach a few key developers. In practice a small organisation wo

Without intellectual property, why would anyone ever acquire a startup? Just copy it or poach a few key developers. In practice a small organisation won't ever sue a large institution for patent or copyright infringement even when it's in clear breach because they have limited resources, low interest in antagonising the other party (which is most likely to be a customer not a competitor) and better things to do that are linked to survival. I've worked in a wide range of developer roles, including bitsy consulting work. Copyright and patents have never been significant in the business models of any of the companies I've worked for in a positive way. Conversely, I have been denied the ability to work by a court injunciton accusing me of copyright infringement (settled as soon as the business situation had changed) and I've seen companies slapped down in an anti-competitive way for "patent infringement". What software customers care about is being able to get people to solve their problems. They want to be able to pick up the phone and get support, and get changes made. The actual build that is live at the moment is just a short-lived tool in their business process. If you had the source code for an organisation's risk management system or trading system or human resources system it would be near worthless. You'd have to get the code to work in your setting and then bend it to your requirements which will be different. You'd end up with an unwieldy system that is inferior to what you'd get if you pieced one together based on your requirements. Where goodwill is involved the barriers are far greater still. But still - imagine a world without copyright. Fly-by-night operations would act as marketing efforts for the company who had their act together. Conversely, if a company got acquired and run into the ground, its customers wouldn't be permanently locked into a parasitic vendor. Startups wouldn't be at risk of shutdown from patent trolls. These patterns would be beneficial to startups and consumers. poach a few key developers If you don't need to goodwill you'd be better off just poaching the key developers and ignoring their prior source and getting them to write something that meets your need. If you care about the goodwill you need the rest of the business.