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The playing field is not so level when we spend billions on R&D only to have another country steal that IP and run with it.

It's no simple coincidence that the Russian Sukhoi T-50 aircraft is a virtual clone of the Lockheed F-22.

The F-22 program cost was around $50B (that's billion). A very significant part of that cost was the work of literally thousands of engineers and software people (I was part of it). In a very real sense, these people are pure creators of IP.

Whether you're for or against defense spending like this, the point is that ripping off the overall design was a theft of tens of billions of dollars, plus if you get into theft of things like avionics or weapons systems designs, it's probably three times that cost. On top of that you add not only the loss of money but also the loss of military advantage.

While there may be abuses of the court system for trivial made-up IP issues, the enormity of the issue cannot even be measured, much less fixed through legal action.