There are two different categories of patent issues at play here, and several different implications for competition. The first issue is on the purely physical

There are two different categories of patent issues at play here, and several different implications for competition. The first issue is on the purely physical level. The fabs (and integrated companies like Intel) fight this one out, and eye each others' patent stacks and maybe exchange a bit of money. This is not something the average Joe can worry about; nobody has the money to build the fab or engage in the chemical and materials research. The second issue and implication is on the logic and circuitry level. The average Joe is not going to be able to design and test something really big and performant, but many companies (not just Intel, AMD, and ARM) are capable of this, and again, money might change hands, but (aside from things like China) absolute shutting down of competitors is not really going to happen. So big players will dominate the highest performance market, but at least there are probably a dozen or so of them, so that will provide some pressure on its own. Lower performance chips (some of which will be more than performant enough for many niches) will probably proliferate. The profit margin on these chips will be cutthroat, because the average Joe can design them, and then needs to negotiate with, e.g. TSMC, to actually build the damn things. And a lot of innovation will happen in these lower-level chips as well. Expect many startups to be bought by the bigger players to enhance their own patent portfolios. And expect that their competitive prices will also drive down the cost of the most performant chips a bit. The performance chip companies will have interesting choices to make. Lower the price to knock out the competition below? Or raise the price? If they raise the price too much, their available market will shrink, and then they'll need to raise the price even more.