TJ, there are hordes of people focused on today, being resurrection day, [in USA though the time has passed in NZ], when Nokia might, or might not, renew their intellectual property agreement with QUALCOMM.
On Good Friday, President Amenhibijihad did NOT nail the British soldiers to crosses, or water-board, or stress position them, nor stack them naked while terrifying them with vicious dogs, but in a "gesture of goodwill to the British people" gave them back. Magnanimous to a fault.
On Monday, I am hopeful for a resurrection. What a fun Easter. AND I got to chase Easter bunny around a garden not to mention scoffing calorie bomb hot cross buns [leavened and not Passover worthy = full of hubris].
To answer your first question, yes.
<Do you really believe the inability to protect IP makes one iota bit of difference in humans making progress? Do you contend that naturally vivacious inventors would stop inventing just because the ideas will be stolen by anyone, whether by (i) outright coimpliment of copying or, (ii) by nefarious and methodical scheming of shameless lawyers in the direction of building nonsensical 2nd order patents around primary patents so as to force a cross-licensing? >
QUALCOMM collects $billions in royalties. They spend $billions in R&D. No income = no R&D. It's a quite straightforward causal relationship. I am planning for the R&D to be good enough for government work after a few more years, at which time the profits will then flow to the bottom line and bust out over the gunwales into my coffers.
I will, following the principles of philanthropic investing, do more R&D and excellent development to make even better things which are very high risk, so I might lose my money. But if I succeed, I will have an even bigger philanthropic investing and inventing opportunity.
People who have to buy groceries next week and fill the SUV can't afford to take such dodgy chances and must invest safely in residential property to rent to retail salespeople. I think they are MAD. Rents here do NOT match property prices and neither do incomes. Thank goodness for Japanese housewives buying uridashi by the NZ$billion and pushing our NZ$ to 85 yen and US73c so Kiwis loaded down with cash [albeit on borrowed time] can go shopping in China and at QUALCOMM. They are NOT buying gold.
So, while you hoard gold, Japanese hoard $NZ and Kiwis hoard houses, I am off into the wild blue yonder launching rockets into low earth orbit at 1414 km to replenish the fizzling Globalstar constellation. I'm sure you can see which is the most sensible economic activity.
One of them is R&D rich, built on intellectual property protected by Uncle Sam and umpty megatons of nucular bombs, predator drones and those amazing stealth bombers and window-opening cruise missiles, bringing in the 21st century era of mobile cyberspace via CDMA cyberphones, enabling even further developments such as the Q which will replace yen, $NZ, USc and Aztec-era totems. The others are prosaic, atavistic, introspective, zero-sum swappers and squabblers.
Anyway, Big Bang is today; Nokia vs QUALCOMM. Which I suspect will end as a fizzer with lawyers swarming into the arguments, litigating from Vladivostock to Valparaiso, Lebanon [middle east] to Lebanon [Kansas].
Without the cash flow, the inventors would still try to invent, but they'd have limited time what with working the tills at McDonalds. It's hard to launch a rocket without some serious cash flow. That's why USA launches rockets and NZ doesn't. We launch sheep into a shearing shed. It's good, healthy, physical work, though I prefer earning my living explaining this to you on a keyboard.
Yes, it's true that intellectual property is like a tax on the rest. But the sheeple are better off for it just as sheep would not be alive if they were not being fleeced. We would not bother clearing the forests of pythons and lions [which like eating sheep], fencing pasture and filling it with sheep who get to gambol [when lambs] and eat lots of grass and have a nice lie down under a tree, which is what they like doing. The rams love it when they get turned loose during mating season.
Nor do they have to worry about old age pensions, arthritis and dementia. Suddenly, they have gone.
Mqurice |
