Imagine the disincentive to software development if after months of work another company could come along and copy your work and market it under its own name...without legal restraints to such copying, companies like Apple could not afford to advance the state of the art.

I could name about a dozen paths, and you'd like to have a whole bunch of research on all those paths, and then, eventually, at least four to five companies with really significant financing try and get to big scale, going down and really trying to prove it out.

OK, I have a nickname. My family calls me 'Trey' because I'm William the third. My dad has the same name, which is always confusing because my dad is well known, and I'm also known.

On the supply side, for innovation, you'd say, go look at those R&D budgets, and they haven't moved far for years. In the case of the US - which is the majority of R&D funding across every category you can name: health, energy, whatever - it's been about $5 billion a year from the Department of Energy.

Perhaps I should be flattered that somebody imagines the name is worth so much, especially since my parents gave me the same name 42 years ago for free.

According to Ethiopian custom, parents wait to name a baby because children often die in the first weeks of life.