A patent on a ball-point pen only affects how you make your pen. A company can make a competing, non-ballpoint pen that still writes on the same paper and is s

A patent on a ball-point pen only affects how you make your pen. A company can make a competing, non-ballpoint pen that still writes on the same paper and is still the same color (though it might be more expensive or messier or whatever), so not licensing the patent isn't disastrous. Even with a patent on something like an engine, I can still design my own (likely less efficient) engine, which'll still drive on the same roads and probably even use the same gasoline that works slightly differently. A patent on something like MP3 or One-Click-Ordering prevents competitors from including a feature. If I want to make an e-commerce site, I have to have multiple clicks to order something or I have to license Amazon's patent. If I want to make any sort of media hardware or software that can encode/decode or import/export or even play the content out there, I need a slew of patents licensed. There's no work-around or alternative method, I simply can't include that feature without licensing. It's the difference between "licensing this patent lets me build off the work of another company to make my product better" and "licensing this patent is mandatory to compete in this field". In my mind, patents of the first type are fine, while patents of the second type are bad. I should be able to create something that can (for example) play MP3s without licensing, but do so at the cost of efficiency or power (because I'm using a less effective method).