See, this is what I don’t get. Every single shoe ever produced has, at least in theory, a goal of being a “better” shoe than the model that came before. Just because Nike had better success in their R&D and, by all accounts made a step change rather than a marginal incremental gain, doesn’t change the fact that continual development is happening, and always has. I bet Radcliffe’s shoes when she ran were better than the shoes used to set the record before that.
Stifling development will just lead to general apathy … in the same way the UCI effectively killed the hour for decades with their Merckx rules.