So, let’s say you are the owner of a company that builds solar powered mousetraps. They are more expensive than traditional mousetraps, many models by a wide margin. Yet, your top end mouse trap is not able to catch more mice than traditional traps costing significantly less. They also have quirks that traditional mousetraps do not. They are louder, more prone to failure due to more necessary parts, can only catch one mouse at a time and also cause irreparable damage to other expensive household items when they fail. Really your only marketing tactic is pushing the fact that they are solar, and therefore simply must be better.

But, let’s say your marketing scheme works, and your mousetraps are regarded as being the pinnacle of their function. Then it happens….someone introduces a solar mousetrap to the market that offers significantly better trapping rates than your product, operates more quietly, can catch several mice at once and has a longer MTBF. What do you do? Well, you could sit back and hope that no one notices since your iTrap name is now synonymous with solar mousetraps (see: iPhone, Apple – Part One). If that doesn’t work, you could simply improve your mousetrap to compete (see: ideas, obvious but seemingly antiquated). Or you could simply sue your competitor under the claim that you not only invented solar mouse traps, but the sun to power them and the mice they catch were your idea in the first place (see: iPhone, Apple – Part Two – how suing Samsung and Google will likely only serve to get them angry). Speaking of mousetraps, did you ever hear about the time the Swiftech H220 got banned in the US?