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Edison and the light bulb are another good example. The reason Philips became so big was because the Netherlands had no patent law for half a century and they just copied everyone else's innovations, something the company tries to hide nowadays since they're in the business of patent trolling themselves. Many of the people Edison put out of business through patent trolling decided to work for Philips. Soon the Dutch light bulbs were better and cheaper than anyone else's.

EDIT: In fact, the light bulbs became so reliable that light bulb manifacturers decided to design worse light bulbs for the sake of profit, creating the first known example of a cartel specifically formed with planned obsolescence in mind[0]. But that's another story.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel



Ditto Lego.


Lego is not from Holland, rather from Denmark, so why "ditto"?


Because they took someone else's design, and then sued everybody that tried to use 'their' design. They attempted to at least put a legal figleaf on this by acquiring that company for a pittance many years later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Fisher_Page

LEGO should really acknowledge that what they did was wrong.


Thank you: had not known of this.


It was a blatant and extreme rip off of someone else's work too. They copied every single detail of branding, marketing, packaging and product:

http://hilarypagetoys.com/Images/articlestock/article875_Ima...




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