Nevertheless, such patents are now handed out regularly, creating an arms race amongst tech companies to have a second-strike capability in the event their own innovations are challenged.

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Rebecca Fannin is the author of Silicon Dragon: How China is Winning the Tech Race.

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The firm is in a frenetic race to rule the latest instant high-tech industry: on-site service providers, or OSPs.

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"The same tech we use in a Formula One race to find Castrol logos rushing past at 200mph we can use to find DKNY baseball caps on backwards in young men the police are looking for to help them with their inquiries", said OmniPerception's chief executive David McIntosh.

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This time-hopping and time-wasting adventure stars Emilio Estevez as a race-car driver and Mick Jagger as the high-tech body snatcher who plunks Estevez out of a car wreck and sends him eighteen years into the future.

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The greatest strength, but also the greatest weakness of high tech is that whenever a cool new technology comes along we all race to implement it into whatever we are doing.

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This is the younger, tech-savvy, social media crowd that flocked to Obama during his race for the presidency in 2008.

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In this year's race, entrants confronted complex intersections and traffic, a situation that seemed destined to end in a high-tech demolition derby.

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