alt Hacker NewsI don't think that makes any sense whatsoever.
If everyone could make these machines, there'd be more of these machines.
There are so many examples of this out there, already, that I find this specious "no next generation" argument to be either simply coming from bias, or ignorance.
For sure, we only care about Taiwan because there is one Taiwan. End patents: no more Taiwan problem.
> If everyone could make these machines, there'd be more of these machines.
My post is in violent agreement with this, for this generation of machines.
ASML spends ~$5B annually on R&D with the expectation that they will be able to make ~30% net profit in the future. If you remove patent protection, there will be more competition and obviously profit margins will fall.
I want to rephrase that for emphasis. The point of aa-jv's post was that we would get cheaper chips by invalidating IP. Cheaper chips means lower margins (because you have not lowered input prices). Lower margins was the explicit goal, so to the extent that the changes in IP law work, you will get lower margins for companies like ASML.
At that point, you have a field of companies looking at (say) 10% net returns, still needing to invest billions of new capital into R&D every year. Worse: no patents means that Company A could spend $5B on R&D and Company B could spend $0, and both of them could reap the benefits of that $5B by Company A. So it's not even necessarily clear that the industry would see much net innovation.
Are we even certain there are companies who would enter this capital-intensive business assuming IP was free? Compulsory licensing is a thing, but I am not aware of that even being something that has been requested.