Patents are a very important piece of business as they give business the protection they need for their investment in research and development of new technology and products.
That is what is often "claimed" but I've actually seen very little real evidence to back up said claims (but I've seen plenty of evidence to show that patents are being used to stifle innovation by companies that own them yet don't actual "use" them for anything except to prevent others from using a technology that they don't want to succeed).
What would stop one of your customers from copying your design? The process would not be as easy as in Soros Shorts's hypothetical example, however someone could reverse engineer a design and dump it on the market.
Reverse engineering was how we got PC clones - but funnily enough IBM didn't go out of business did they?