[dventimi]

The point is that it's difficult to become a big corporation without a monopoly, and it's difficult to maintain a monopoly without government help through patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Trade secrets--which have got nothing to do with with patents, copyrights, and trademarks and I should have just said has much--are another way to maintain a monopoly without government help, but trade secrets themselves are difficult to maintain if the secret gets out, and it almost always gets out.