"Copyright" and "patent" are different concepts and saying the two together, e.g. "copyright and patent", is wrong. People that write "copyright and patent" are almost invariably defending patents by arguing copyrights are important.
Cloning products is primarily copyright and trademark infringement. The companies that are victims of cloning fight back with trademark and copyright laws, typically not with patent laws.
Copyright is primarily for preventing others from directly copying a specific implementation (source code, MP3 player look & feel, etc.). Patents cover an invention, a conceptual thing. An invention doesn't need to have a physical implementation to be patentable.
For instance, LAME[1] is copyrighted itself and does not violate anyone else's copyrights, but anybody that does any MP3 encoding[2] without having an appropriate license to the underlying MP3 patents is infringing patents.
Comments
"Copyright" and "patent" are different concepts and saying the two together, e.g. "copyright and patent", is wrong. People that write "copyright and patent" are almost invariably defending patents by arguing copyrights are important.
Cloning products is primarily copyright and trademark infringement. The companies that are victims of cloning fight back with trademark and copyright laws, typically not with patent laws.
Copyright is primarily for preventing others from directly copying a specific implementation (source code, MP3 player look & feel, etc.). Patents cover an invention, a conceptual thing. An invention doesn't need to have a physical implementation to be patentable.
For instance, LAME[1] is copyrighted itself and does not violate anyone else's copyrights, but anybody that does any MP3 encoding[2] without having an appropriate license to the underlying MP3 patents is infringing patents.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAME
[2] In a country that the MP3 encoding patents are registered, of course.