Using a very contrived and simplified example. If company A spent a trillion dollars coming up with the manufacturing process and formula to cure every cancer

Using a very contrived and simplified example. If company A spent a trillion dollars coming up with the manufacturing process and formula to cure every cancer in the world. The intellectual property at it's root is the protection of that R&D investment. Company A than get's to setup manufacturing, and set pricing for the market, at the very least to recover the billion dollars investment. If company B comes along, and spends 100 million dollars to steal that magic formula and the manufacturing process. Company B now has similar costs to setup manufacturing, but significantly less in R&D costs that need to be recovered, to sell to the same product to the same customers. In the contrived example, there is no reason to buy company A's product from their IP, when the same can be had from company B, presumably for less. Company B than earns a larger profit, which can be sunk into their own IP for the next generation, giving them a huge step up. Of course the real world with tech products is way more messier than this, but in theory it's possible to do. As I posted elsewhere though, I don't believe it's fair to say it happened in the case with Nortel.