I will politely disagree. I expect to be able to sell my novel and therefore, the book it is made into. No one else can write what I write. If people find value in that, then I will be able to make some money from that. If not, then so be it. The other thing is that patenting stuff is a monopoly, and therefore expensive. It's not worth it for most smaller companies or single entrepreneur endeavors. It's better to put time and money into iterating a product than worrying about China stealing it and selling it for cheap if you can have the next version ready to go when that happens. You can't stop China, but you can certainly out-create them