When Kaplan mentioned Texaco v. Pennzoil in context of V v. Z, the first thing that occurred to me was that he had a keen and subliminal awareness that Z is not just one Chinese company contending with Vringo.
It's also an arm of the Chinese government because of its large ownership percentage, and really Beijing IS calling the shots here, make no mistake about that. IE, money hardly matters when the Chinese government desperately wants US market share with all its snooping hardware & software already embedded in their devices.
Lately, news reports are replete with instances of computer security compromises (including our government agencies) by Chinese, North Korean (China's love child) and Russian hackers who have no special love for the west. This issue has long departed from the "commerce and trade" arenas and slid onto
"political and warfare" grounds. Please realize, western countries are vastly more developed than say China or Russia whose hinterlands are about the same as they were 4-5 hundred years ago (awesome lack of infrastructure).
Computers & digital technology are running today's world. Any entity, agency (or country) that can surreptitiously access data from other sources can effectively control those sources. Once China gets a hard foothold in the US and has devices carried around in the hands & pockets of countless citizens and agencies, I can't speculate where our domestic society goes from there. I prefer to simply think about Texaco v. Pennzoil. It just feels better.
