America's Innovation Engine is Choking on Its Own IP

The $50 Trillion Lesson We Keep Forgetting

In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee made a decision that would define your digital life. As the inventor of the World Wide Web, he could have patented his creation and become incomprehensibly wealthy. Instead, he gave it away, releasing the protocols (HTTP, HTML) freely to the world.

The result? The entire internet infrastructure you use daily, from Instagram to Discord to every website you've ever visited. Economists estimate the open Web created over $50 trillion in global economic value.

Now imagine the alternative: Berners-Lee patents the Web. Companies fragment into competing, incompatible networks. You'd need different browsers for different sites. Apps couldn't link to each other. The internet as you know it never happens.

Today's tech giants are making that same mistake, just more slowly. And Gen Z is paying the price.

Why You Can't Fix Your iPhone (And What That Costs All of Us)

Remember when Apple made it nearly impossible to repair your own phone? Or when John Deere locked farmers out of fixing their own tractors?

That's not an accident. It's strategy.

Compare that to Framework Laptop: modular, fixable, upgradeable. Or the Right to Repair movement that's finally forcing change. The difference isn't technical capability—it's business model.

Apple argues they need control for "security" and "quality." Meanwhile, Framework proves you can have both repairability and quality. iFixit has become a Gen Z rallying point precisely because people recognize the artificial restrictions.

The cost? E-waste crisis. Repair skills dying out. Farmers waiting weeks for authorized technicians while crops rot. Products designed to be replaced, not fixed.

This isn't just annoying. It's unsustainable.

The Platforms You Actually Use Prove Open Works

Discord: Built on open protocols. Anyone can build bots. Massive developer ecosystem. Now worth $15+ billion.

Minecraft: Open to modding. That openness created a billion-dollar creator economy and kept the game relevant for over a decade. Compare that to games that lock down modding and die within years.

Roblox: Entire economy built on creator tools. Open platform, capture value through services. $45+ billion market cap.

You grew up in these ecosystems. You know intuitively that the platforms that let you build, mod, and create are better than locked-down alternatives.

So why is the rest of the economy doing the opposite?

AI Is Repeating the Same Pattern Right Now

Stable Diffusion (open-source) vs DALL-E (closed): Stable Diffusion exploded because anyone could run it, modify it, integrate it. OpenAI tried to maintain control and lost adoption speed.

Meta's Llama models: By open-sourcing their LLMs, Meta forced OpenAI to compete on execution rather than access. The result? Faster innovation, more applications, better tools for everyone.

GitHub Copilot controversy: Microsoft/OpenAI trained on open-source code, then charged for access. Developers felt betrayed—their freely shared work monetized without permission.

This is happening in real-time. The companies choosing openness are winning adoption. The ones hoarding are losing ground.

The COVID Vaccine: When Open Could Have Saved Millions

The mRNA technology behind COVID vaccines came from decades of publicly-funded NIH research. Taxpayer money created the breakthrough.

When the pandemic hit, Moderna initially signaled they'd share the tech. Then didn't. Patents stayed locked. Global south countries couldn't manufacture at scale.

Millions died waiting. Not because we couldn't make enough vaccines—because IP restrictions prevented it.

The cost of closed: measurable in lives.

Compare that to the open vaccine initiatives that did emerge: COVAX struggled against patent barriers. When India and South Africa proposed IP waivers, pharma companies lobbied against it.

Public funding created the tech. Private patents blocked distribution. People died.

Climate Tech Is Fragmenting While the Planet Burns

Gen Z will inherit this crisis. And we're making it worse through fragmentation.

Heat pump standards: Every manufacturer proprietary. Can't mix components. Slows adoption.

Solar panels: Incompatible inverters, monitoring systems, batteries. Each installation custom, expensive.

EV charging: Still a mess. Tesla plugs, CCS, CHAdeMO. You know the frustration.

Carbon accounting: Dozens of incompatible standards. Companies can't compare emissions. Progress unmeasurable.

Climate change doesn't care about your competitive advantage. It requires unprecedented coordination. Instead, we're fighting over IP while the planet warms.

The technology exists to solve these problems. The business models prevent it.

The Talent Trap: Why Your Smartest Friends Are Optimizing Ad Clicks

Take Sarah—MIT engineer, brilliant, could work on climate modeling that might save millions.

Or she could optimize TikTok's algorithm for $400K + stock.

She has loans. Family. TikTok offers stability, prestige, clear path. Climate lab offers a postdoc stipend and grant uncertainty.

Sarah chooses TikTok.

This pattern repeats across your entire generation. The best minds going to FAANG companies to make marginal improvements to engagement metrics while climate, healthcare, and infrastructure challenges go unsolved.

Not because these problems are unsolvable. Because capitalism can't monetize them profitably enough, fast enough.

You see this in your own career choices. The incentives are broken.

What America Built on Open Infrastructure (That You Take for Granted)

GPS: $12+ billion in public funding. Made freely available. Result: Uber, Lyft, food delivery, every app with maps. Total economic value: $1.4+ trillion.

You've never lived without GPS. You assume your phone knows where you are. That only works because the US government made it free for everyone.

The Internet: Defense funding created open protocols (TCP/IP). Free standards enabled everything from Netflix to Zoom to this article.

COVID Tests: Once IP restrictions eased, at-home tests became abundant. Before that, artificial scarcity from patent holders.

The pattern: When foundational tech is shared freely, it becomes a platform for unlimited innovation. When it's locked down, progress stalls.

Why We Stopped: The 1970s Shift That Broke Everything

Milton Friedman's shareholder primacy doctrine: corporations exist solely to maximize shareholder value. Everything else is "inefficient."

This killed patient capital. Companies that once funded 10+ year research compressed to 2-3 years. Quarterly earnings pressure prevents long-term thinking.

The result? Bell Labs used to produce transistors, lasers, Unix—fundamental breakthroughs with no immediate profit. That ended in 1984 when AT&T broke up and competitive pressure made "unproductive research" impossible.

Now: The quality research isn't happening because it can't generate quarterly returns.

The Patent War Nobody Talks About

$14 billion annually spent on patent litigation. Not creating value, fighting over who owns what.

Tech giants cross-license to each other while using patents as weapons against smaller competitors. "Patent thickets" block innovation rather than protecting it.

You don't see this directly. But you feel it: fewer startups, slower feature development, products that can't interoperate because someone "owns" the obvious way to do something.

China Is Building While We're Litigating

TikTok dominated while US social media fought over IP.

DJI drones own 70%+ market share while US companies litigate regulations.

Shein/Temu move at unprecedented speed while American retailers fight over supply chain IP.

China invests in shared infrastructure: Belt and Road, green tech sharing, coordinated industrial policy.

The EU forces interoperability: USB-C mandate, data portability requirements, open standards. Creating larger, more efficient markets.

US companies lobby to maintain lock-in while losing global competitiveness.

The irony: IP obsession is weakening our position.

Proof Open Makes More Money

Red Hat: Gave away Linux. Built $34 billion business on support services.

Android: Open-source → 70%+ market share → billions in services revenue for Google.

Tesla: Open-sourced all patents in 2014. Still winning because execution matters more than patents.

AWS: $80+ billion revenue built entirely on open-source infrastructure (Linux, PostgreSQL, Redis).

The math is simple: Better to capture 10% of a massive market than 100% of a tiny one.

Standard electrical outlets created the entire appliance industry. Universal USB charging (finally happening) makes everything easier, But, Apple the “innovators” were last to join so they could milk profits from proprietary connectors as long as possible.  Still, open platforms win.

New Models That Could Work

Focused Research Organizations (FROs): Nonprofits structured like startups. 5-7 year missions. Public goods output. Examples:

• E11 Bio: mapping brain architecture
• Cultivarium: synthetic biology tools
• Arc Institute: biomedical research

Funded philanthropically, not by VC. No exit pressure. No quarterly earnings. Can pursue infrastructure that pays off in decades.

Public Benefit Corporations: Legal structure balancing profit and mission. Patagonia, Kickstarter prove it scales.

Hybrid Models: Mozilla template, nonprofit parent, for-profit subsidiary. Service revenue funds open development.

What Needs to Change

Policy:

• Tax incentives for open-source R&D (bigger deduction for sharing than hoarding)
• Government procurement requiring open standards (spend $500B annually, demand interoperability)
• Publicly-funded research data must be open (taxpayers paid, they should benefit)
• Patent reform: shorter terms in fast-moving fields, expand right to repair

Culture:

• From: Innovation = competitive advantage to hoard
• To: Innovation = platform enabling ecosystems
• From: Success = market share captured
• To: Success = total value created

Business Strategy:

• Compete on execution, not compatibility tricks
• Open platforms attract better talent (devs want impact, not legal restrictions)
• Network effects multiply value faster than patents protect it

Your Generation's Choice

Gen Z will inherit either:

Path A: Continued fragmentation. Innovation stalled by patent wars. Best talent optimizing engagement metrics. Climate crisis unsolved because "not profitable enough." Markets locked down by incumbents.

Path B: Revival of open innovation. New organizational models for public-benefit R&D. Competition on execution in expanded markets. Talent working on problems that matter.

The evidence is overwhelming: Open platforms create more value than closed ones. The Web, GPS, Linux, Android all prove it.

You've grown up in open ecosystems—Minecraft mods, Discord bots, Roblox creators. You know intuitively that open is better.

The challenge: economic incentives push the opposite direction. Quarterly earnings, VC exit timelines, patent portfolios all reward closed systems.

But those closed systems are slower, smaller, and losing to countries that invest in shared infrastructure.

The most profitable position isn't guarding your slice. It's growing the pie so large that even a small percentage makes everyone richer than total ownership of a fraction ever could.

Tim Berners-Lee proved it. Open platforms built your digital world. We just need to remember the lesson before we choke on our own IP.

America can lead again. Your generation can build better. But only if we stop treating sharing as weakness and recognize it as the strongest competitive strategy that exists.

PS. if you dont know who Tim Berners-Lee is.. Google it! You owe him a lot for not being a greedy tech bro.   

This article is part of my series on open innovation

America's Innovation Engine is Choking on Its Own IP

An Open Innovation Blueprint: Lessons to learn from Bell Labs

From GNU to GitHub: The Open Source Proof

The VC Problem