"Intellectual property (IP) is a lot like taxes: you don’t care about the legal niceties until they apply to you. IP (not to be confused with the IP in TCP/IP, which stands for Internet Protocol) is the fuel that runs our information economy, the wellspring from which a thousand flowers bloom in the form of a plethora of products based on IP previously created, established, and licensed to all comers.
When an inventor creates a valuable technology and patents it, there are two ways to go:
- exploit the technology directly and try to profit from being the sole supplier, or
- license it to anyone on a “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory” (FRAND) basis and nurture an entire industry.
There are plenty of examples of both.
IP licensing can enable not just one company, but an entire industry."
