having had to fund

shabani said:

Hello everyone,

I'm confused by this phrase. Can anyone please tell me why the writer didn't use"having to fund" in the following sentence?

It is then protected against competitors benefiting by imitating the new product without having had to fund its development.

It would make sense to me if it was past tense

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I'm not sure what you mean by 'past tense'...? Are you calling 'having to fund' past tense?

But tense isn't a crucial part of the meaning anyway. The inventor bears the costs of development added to any costs of actual production. The copycat benefits from only having production costs. What is important in the comparison is that the copycat goes straight to the production phase, without having had to fund the development (that is, without any need to make investment in it).

b