No-name chinese cloners selling on Amazon don't care about patents.

Coasting on their patents is exactly why iRobot went bankrupt. If they had a proper incentive to continue innovating, they might be around today. Instead, the patent system incentivized them to erect a tollgate and snooze away in the booth next to it.

> If you're really the first, you should be able to get about a 20 year head start.

That's an opinion, and not one I agree with.

If you and your competitor are racing to develop a thing, whoever wins by a couple months shouldn't get a monopoly for decades.

Most of the time when things get patented, it's strictly worse for innovation in that space until the patents expire. 3d printing is a great example.

It's asinine to think you can outsource manufacturing of whatever object to some other company in another country, but that no one on the planet can make the same thing because "the idea is yours".