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Commercialization
Netscape made the young web legible through a fast commercial browser, then discovered that the implementation layer could become both a path into an open protocol and a strategic chokepoint contested by a platform owner.
How can a commercial product make an open protocol useful at mass scale without turning implementation advantage into control of the commons?
Philo Farnsworth helped make fully electronic television workable through independent invention and secured important patent priority, yet did not build the capital, manufacturing, broadcasting, legal, and narrative institutions that made television a mass system. His life shows that technical evidence can establish contribution without giving an inventor durable authority over commercialization, credit, or the uses to which an invention is put.
Why can an inventor establish technical priority yet fail to build durable institutional power around the invention?