> Every time I've started a business, there's been a lot of work that isn't so much developing "the idea" as much as finding ways to connect it economically the rest of the world. Whereas the naive view would be something like "once we invent fusion, it will be easy to sell".
This is often true of software industry startups. Not so true of many other industries. If you invent a higher temperature turbine blade, for example, figuring out the market for it is trivial. The same is undoubtedly true of fusion.
When I worked at a startup, we knew the military would basically buy our technology, if we could get it working in the first place. The company has been working at it for more than 10 years.
One of the benefits of the patent system is that it allows monetary separation between investors and distributors. ARM doesn’t need to know how to build cell phones or how to market them to consumers. It can focus on chip design and sell IP. That’s specialization at work. And it’s of enormous economic value. If you can’t protect inventions, every company is basically judged on the success of manufacturing/marketing efforts. (That happens anyway, but devaluing IP would accelerate that.)
This is often true of software industry startups. Not so true of many other industries. If you invent a higher temperature turbine blade, for example, figuring out the market for it is trivial. The same is undoubtedly true of fusion.
When I worked at a startup, we knew the military would basically buy our technology, if we could get it working in the first place. The company has been working at it for more than 10 years.
One of the benefits of the patent system is that it allows monetary separation between investors and distributors. ARM doesn’t need to know how to build cell phones or how to market them to consumers. It can focus on chip design and sell IP. That’s specialization at work. And it’s of enormous economic value. If you can’t protect inventions, every company is basically judged on the success of manufacturing/marketing efforts. (That happens anyway, but devaluing IP would accelerate that.)