It has steep costs, but with monopolists they have other ways of extracting value from the inventions.

Awesome book about the history if Bell Labs - virtually all semiconductor tech we use today was created there (transistors, ics, solar, lasers, fiber optics, telecom satellites…), and they had to license it to be allowed to maintain their monopoly status.

https://www.amazon.pl/Idea-Factory-Great-American-Innovation...