Or how hardware may have developed if AMD's early reverse-engineering of Intel chips was deemed illegal. Terrible example, because AMD's right to do that came

Or how hardware may have developed if AMD's early reverse-engineering of Intel chips was deemed illegal. Terrible example, because AMD's right to do that came from their contract with Intel to second source the 8086/8 and 286: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_source#Examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_source#Examples Biotech is extremely rich with small companies, startups, etc., and absent your being able to point out current serious problems, your supposition that the situation might be even better if those small companies were denied IP rights to their developments is at best entirely unfounded.