Good for them to realize the benefits rather than focus on the possible threat(s).
Years ago, I was street vending on Broadway in Times Square. Once another peddler saw I had a good space (the police weren't bothering me for some strange reason) he set up shop. Next day a few other peddlers came and set up shop as well, the first one complained to me about them coming to join, because he thought it would hurt our businesses. I told him no, the more the merrier, since we each had very limited wares to sell, the more peddlers who came would create a bazaar atmosphere that would attract more customers, not less and we would all benefit from the increased traffic, since crowds attract crowds.
Sure enough, as more peddlers set up shop, you could see people streaming across the wide square to see what the crowd was gathering about and we were all doing a land office business. That lasted for about 5 weeks before some vendors got in fights and made a mess the Police could not ignore. Oh well, fortunately I had realized this would happen eventually, so I already had another spot already picked out and tested.
HP may have patents on some technology, but as you already know, there's usually more ways than just one to achieve the same results. Worse yet is that sometimes proprietary tech defeats itself. You may find yourself locked away from the machines that use the materials you need, until the provider/patent holder, releases more advanced fare. Remember Apple? Initially their machines would not sell because Steve Jobs believed he would produce all the software for them. So he held his patents tight. Meanwhile the pc clones were getting everything written for them, because they were selling the most machines and volume is the name of the game in software sales. Same with VHS and Beta Maz. Meanwhile Apple still produced no software worthy of note for a very long time and pc clones ate Steve's lunch.
So, down the road, HP may very well decide that it would be better, revenue wise, to license their technology out, than have it go dormant while they played catch up, and let the expiration date draw closer, while missing out on the revenue and agitating their own customers who are kept waiting for HP to advance.
Like I said before, in 12 to 16 months this industry will probably look very different than it does right now. So there's no way to evaluate what this portends for the future, either quantitatively or qualitatively. Except, as the companies have said, it raises the industries profile.
Best yet, I think that more investors will want to invest in smaller, more focused companies, than a huge omnivorous entity, where even a few extra billion in earnings may not have as much of an impact on the share price. With HP starting out in 12 to 16 months, I sincerely doubt they'll open with billions in sales, nor will they achieve that for quite a few more years to come.
