Trademarks, patents, and copyrights are only as valuable as your willingness to pay a lawyer to confront those who are infringing.
You can have all of the patents, trademarks, and copyrights in the world, but they're useless unless you defend them. Which costs a lot of money.
I'm not sure what the alternative would be, though. We can't do away with the system completely. Disney needs to be able to earn a profit on content they produce otherwise they won't invest in producing content.
Trademarks, patents, and copyrights are only as valuable as your willingness to pay a lawyer to confront those who are infringing.
You can have all of the patents, trademarks, and copyrights in the world, but they're useless unless you defend them. Which costs a lot of money.
I'm not sure what the alternative would be, though. We can't do away with the system completely. Disney needs to be able to earn a profit on content they produce otherwise they won't invest in producing content.