Goes both ways. As someone who has tried bringing new products to market, it’s extremely annoying that nearly everything you can think of already has similar patent. I’ve also reverse engineered a few things (circuits and disassembled code), as a little guy, working for a small business . I don’t think people usually scan patents to learn things, and reverse engineering usually isn’t too hard.

If I were a capitalist, I’d argue that if a big business “steals” an idea, and implements it more effectively and efficiently than the small business, then the small business should probably fail.