IBM patented the Scanning Tunneling Microscope. Because they specified vacuum operating conditions, the pantent hasn’t been generally enforced to date. Patents exist to serve human qualities-of-living. They are nothing more than a tool. In a world of MNT plenty, we should not deny MNTed products because of patent infringements, we should deny patents. Millions are dying in Africa because of AIDS treatments unavailable for local production due to patent infringement concerns. A troubling subset of the world’s MNT community have a scewed libertopian worldview.

Keep an eye on the viagra case in China, by the way, which will reveal their attitude to US intellectual property imperialism.

If Western nations can’t sort this out, they’re doomed to take second place to nations with more enlightened intellectual property law. MNT manufacturing systems will rapidly shift the costs of manufacturing away from capital, manufacturing labour and raw materials and toward the design effort. The cheaper you can turn out designs, the better it is for everyone.

The enormous overhead associated with avoiding adverse IP conflicts will loom over every project like the Sword of Damocles, dampening the enthusiasm of venture capital, and probably even cancelling projects who cannot design around IP obstacles or obtain a license for necessary components.

I’d advocate that all such IP is published, and available for use under a free license. The original creators of the IP are still best placed to benefit from it, having a greater understanding of the manufacturing process and a longer lead time. And you can be fairly sure that their IP will be reverse engineered quickly anyway.

Other nations will not care about the legal restrictions imposed by Western corporations and will be able to integrate technologies with unfettered synergy, which may well given them a strong lead in the field. Such a thing is surely something that Western governments would fear greatly.