[pvn]

[ QUOTE ]
I agree that trade secrets often don't have legal protection beyond "voluntary solutions" (which are really "mandatory solutions" in many industries at this point). But the reason that NDAs have any bite is because there is a legal apparatus backing them up and ral consequences to breaking them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, and?

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not quite sure I completely follow your second point about R&D. I agree that many products will be reverse engineerable, but that doesnt make housing R&D operations unimportant for countries.

[/ QUOTE ]

I am not sure that I understand what it means for something to be important "for a country".

R&D is going to be housed wherever it makes the most sense. If region A provides monopoly/patent protection/whatever for the product to be developed and region B doesn't, what impact does this have on the decision as to where to house that R&D? The R&D gets the same protection in region B regardless of whether the engineer working on it is in region A or region B, does it not? And it clearly gets the same lack of protection in either case.

If the R&D gets more protection in region B only if it is actually developed IN region B, then we're talking about a whole new level of corporate welfare. People in region A still get the same stuff, people in region B pay extra for it.