Comment by philpem

Probably the same reason some major companies (FTSE250/Fortune 500) do the same thing. It's called a "competitor product teardown" - the goal is to identify things your competitors are doing, whether they're patented, and whether you can do the same thing (or something similar) to improve your own product.

It's basically the BigCo Inc. version of "that's a great idea, I'm glad I thought of it". (and usually patented it too)