*Follow the money.
*It would take a lot to make Chinese espionage and piracy look attractive as a global business model, but this would pretty much do it – and the majors have been arming themselves for this conflict for years now. Google bought Motorola, a battered Samsung is countersuing everything in sight, and there's still some folk-notion around that a garage start-up can thrive with a fresh tech idea. It's not "fresh" unless the courts say it's fresh, and that lawfare will cost you three million easy.
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"In the smartphone industry alone, according to a Stanford University analysis, as much as $20 billion was spent on patent litigation and patent purchases in the last two years — an amount equal to eight Mars rover missions. Last year, for the first time, spending by Apple and Google on patent lawsuits and unusually big-dollar patent purchases exceeded spending on research and development of new products, according to public filings."
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