Well I suppose it depends on which side of the table you are sitting on.
As a guy who has had his designs ripped off I can assert its not a pleasant thing to see someone else profit from your idea. This is made doubly aggravating when you realize that they could have had a share of the profit by contacting you and working with you, but instead decided they wanted the whole ball of wax.
Being able to copy someones product isn't nearly the same as coming up with the idea and working all the bugs. Many people would consider that copying theft of intellectual property.
One disadvantage of the current state of near anarchy as regards the protection of intellectual property is that many advances are withheld from production and not made available because the inventor does not feel secure in his/her ability to produce a new invention. I can personally state that I have several very nice ideas that have been held in reserve for over a year until the time is right to produce them.