Are you arguing that patents should be applicable to games? The problem with that is that people will spend thousands of hours on experimentation and playtesting and then the patent system will swoop in the day after release and tell them they aren't actually allowed to release the thing they invented and created themselves.
I wasn't arguing for game mechanic patents, I was using the existence of patents as evidence that we've recognized the problem of "person A invests massively in researching something new, person B just copies them and wins in the market" and tried to solve it.
Indeed, copyright and licensing are similar attempts to solve this problem. Indie devs tend to lack the resources to litigate with cloners, though.
