The semiconductor device industry and Silicon Valley would have never appeared if the early companies working in this field would have been controlled by people obsessed about secrecy and "IP protection".

During the fifties and the sixties, and even until the early seventies, it was common for everyone to publish research papers very unlike those that are published today, where the concrete information is minimal.

In the early research papers about semiconductor devices and integrated circuits, it was normal to give complete recipes, including quantities of chemicals, temperatures and times for the processing steps and so on. After reading such papers, you could reproduce the recipes and make the device described and you could measure for yourself to see how true are the claims presented in the paper.

That open sharing of information has led to a very quick evolution of the semiconductor technologies during the early years, until more traditional business-oriented management has begun to restrict the information provided to the public.

It is said that such sharing of information still exists in China in many fields, and it is the source of their rapid progress.