> Domain names pay per year because there's an ongoing service attached. There's no such thing for patent (besides fee to file)
I work for a registrar and know people working at registries so I know that is not the case. The reason they charge more than like 1-2 dollars per year is to make it expensive to hoard domains.
Sadly though, not expensive enough to actually prevent anyone other than the very low end of consumers from hoarding domains.
I worked for a registrar for a decade+ and worked with a lot of hoarders. Very early on in my career I actually dobbed one in to our local registry authority (because I was naive, and he was CLEARLY breaching the requirements for our ccTLD and so I thought 'Well this is wrong and I should report it') and is how I discovered nobody actually cares about hoarding and just wants to maximise revenue. (Well duh I suppose.)
I work for a registrar and know people working at registries so I know that is not the case. The reason they charge more than like 1-2 dollars per year is to make it expensive to hoard domains.