Chinese memory firm CXMT relied on leaked Samsung technology to skip years of R&D, court testimony claims

In a better world, all of these technologies that get stolen by various corpo espionage and reverse engineering teams would be freely shared with the world so everyone can benefit from them, and people not in the dev teams might have improvements they can suggest.

But instead we have a bunch of rich adult children who would rather take the ball and go home because they don’t think they’ve recieved enough praise for bringing it, and wanting to charge everyone just to look at it.

It’s not a great metaphor, but honestly dealing with companies and governments feels a lot like dealing with children you aren’t allowed to discipline or even talk sternly to because their parents have forbidden you from interfering.

Cambridge University found that the steam engine was held back for ~40 years because of bad patents

archive.org/details/againstintellect0000bold

You mean 40 years of delay for the destruction of our biosphere?

I’d call that a win.

40 years of burning far more coal than necessary due to inefficient engines

Whether the overall effect was positive or negative with respect to the biome, no clue

Yes, but also induced demand. More efficient engines means less coal per task, but more tasks, maybe so many more that total coal use increases.