linuxmemes

The real problem is catering to manufacturers demanding to have their own bespoke driver pack, often including some stupid branded management application, when it's just the same as the other dozen manufacturers packaging of the same product. Then you end up with bloated "driver packs" and a system tray of a half dozen vendors screaming for you to pay attention to them and know that they are somehow contributing to your experience.

This is exactly why I use driverpacks in Windows (3rd party, like SDI). If the drivers are not in the pack, I download them from the manufacturer and if they're packed with an app, I just extract the whole thing and point Windows (through manual driver update) to search for the drivers in that location. It will install only what it needs to work, nothing else.

they still sold their devices, but the users that were oblivious suffered

Or they did know, but the copy was a lot cheaper than the real thing. Hell, I've done it. If it does the same thing, why buy the more expensive thingie. I get IP rights and all that, but seriously, in the end, you just have to deal with these things. Unless you're Intel, you should expect your device/chip to end up being copied. China doesn't enforce western world IP laws, so it's a "free for all" kind of a thing there. If you plan on doing this (making your own device/chip), your device/chip better be niche enough so it's not viable to actually copy the design. Otherwise, copies will pop up left and right.