IDG Contributor Network: Without intellectual property licensing, where would we be?

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:exp