First, I would think that research would be more distributed - more smaller investments rather than centralized large developments. Second, I am not just advocating for abolishing intellectual property restrictions but also for promoting a culture of sharing. If we actually care about advancing human society, we should be willing to look at how to truly maximize innovation. It seems to be quite plausible that if we abandon IP restrictions as a notion and embrace sharing while also permitting reverse engineering of those who don't share, we would see a much higher rate of innovation. That has HUGE implications for society and I can't accept the idea that patents are good simply because most people believe it.