G'day Mowerfreak,
Two points regarding patents; that many laymen aren't aware of:
1. They are quite expensive to apply for, take out, and keep current, until they expire. And those costs go up, the more countries you want to cover.
2. There is NO patent rights enforcement agency attached to any patent office in the world, AFAIK.
That is, if you want to commence litigation for an infringement of your patent, you are responsible for all up-front legal, and court, costs involved, in the country in which the infringement occurs.
So as you might imagine, very substantial financial resources are required to run an infringement case. Not many individual inventors could afford to.
In reality, all a patent actually does, if you are the inventor or their assignee, is permit you to enforce it through court action against individual infringers, limited by the depth of your, and their, pockets!
Until it expires, and as the design details are a matter of public record, it's easy for clone manufacturers to be tooled up and under starter's orders, ready to flood the market when the expiry occurs.
This is pretty much exactly what happened when the Atom Computer Ignition Modules patents expired, BTW.
seeing a prime example of a massive company from a massive economy getting this idea from a relatively small nation for themselves when they have plenty already from their own country.
