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I would chop up your question into two categories. 1) Is IP a useful and protective measure for people or companies to safeguard their innovations? Yes. 2) Is the current IP legal landscape doing much good for actual innovation and provide substantial benefit to consumers? I'd say no. There are plenty of good suggestions of how to change the regime in the Economist article.
"Patents are supposed to spread knowledge, by obliging holders to lay out their innovation for all to see; they often fail, because patent-lawyers are masters of obfuscation. Instead, the system has created a parasitic ecology of trolls and defensive patent-holders, who aim to block innovation, or at least to stand in its way unless they can grab a share of the spoils. An early study found that newcomers to the semiconductor business had to buy licences from incumbents for as much as $200m. Patents should spur bursts of innovation; instead, they are used to lock in incumbents’ advantages."
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2015/08/08/time-to-fix-patentsHere's some serious, tangible evidence that the IP legal landscape hinders invention and innovation seriously.
"Do intellectual property (IP) rights on existing technologies hinder subsequent innovation? Using newly-collected data on the sequencing of the human genome by the public Human Genome Project and the private firm Celera, this paper estimates the impact of Celera’s gene-level IP on subsequent scientific research and product development. Genes initially sequenced by Celera were held with IP for up to two years, but moved into the public domain once re-sequenced by the public effort. Across a range of empirical specifications, I find evidence that Celera’s IP led to reductions in subsequent scientific research and product development on the order of 20 to 30 percent. Taken together, these results suggest that Celera’s short-term IP had persistent negative effects on subsequent innovation relative to a counterfactual of Celera genes having always been in the public domain."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3955392/A jersey is not a genome granted, but is it really necessary to copyright a jersey fade? With all the artistic talent at these companies, you would hope that the closing of one design door would open another.
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youramericanlover
Chopsicle
Torm literally ordered a Classic Jersey size set and replicated it, feature for feature, stitch for stitch, including the IP registered details, just another armband. The jerseys were returned after a few weeks for full refund.
IP laws are there to protect everyone, from multinationals to sole traders; it works both ways to protect the investment into a developing and establishing a product/concept/brand/innovation. If anyone can make a decent argument supporting this naive/stupid/lazy/brazen approach, please, I'd love to hear it