I had never thought of the question ‘Who do we sue’ as being of strategic importance until a few weeks ago.
Having coffee with a friend who has worked for a long time for a US multinational corporation that developed and commercialised a very useful chemical component technology, long since copied by low cost manufacturers in China, he explained it.
While my friends employer retains a significant market share in the US, everywhere else it has almost disappeared, although perhaps ironically, pockets do remain in Asia.
His analysis was that the nature of US corporations is that they like to know who to sue should something go wrong. This was the one and only reason his employer retained their US market share. Their US customers knew their chances of success in suing a Chinese supplier in the event that something went wrong were somewhere between none and a snowflakes chance.
Therefore they continued to pay double the component price to his US owned employer as a sort of unstated insurance.
They knew who to sue.
