> waterless ones are patented and without a water line you'd be locked in to higher priced products and/or have to spend a lot of extra money to run a new water line after the walls go up.
Urinals have a very long life cycle, and by the time one needs to be replaced, it is likely any patent left would be in Design only, and thus other manufacturers can build and sell them, allowing the market to rebalance the cost.
In other words, "they're patented" is a bogus argument for needing a water line.
There are better arguments which you tried to hit on - what if you want to replace a urinal with a stall or some other fixture, e.g. - but this one alone isn't a good one. There are also plenty of counter arguments for why this kind of thing is a really bad idea in the case of a water line (e.g., a blind water line is going to be a much more ugly problem when renovations do happen if they aren't well enough noted in the designs or if the designs are unavailable, and what happens when a blind water line leaks, bursts or corrodes through inside a wall due to freezing/accidentally drilling or nailing through a pipe/etc.)
Urinals have a very long life cycle, and by the time one needs to be replaced, it is likely any patent left would be in Design only, and thus other manufacturers can build and sell them, allowing the market to rebalance the cost.
In other words, "they're patented" is a bogus argument for needing a water line.
There are better arguments which you tried to hit on - what if you want to replace a urinal with a stall or some other fixture, e.g. - but this one alone isn't a good one. There are also plenty of counter arguments for why this kind of thing is a really bad idea in the case of a water line (e.g., a blind water line is going to be a much more ugly problem when renovations do happen if they aren't well enough noted in the designs or if the designs are unavailable, and what happens when a blind water line leaks, bursts or corrodes through inside a wall due to freezing/accidentally drilling or nailing through a pipe/etc.)