"klaatu barada nikto!"

As microcontrollers move into the object oriented programing world we're starting to see the emergence of reusable code. Many of the benefits of a standardized OS can be found in an object exchange like the one Parallax has set up for their Propeller Microcontroller. When developing a small line tracking robot for instance, you could download a servo control object and a light sensor object and join the two with the appropriate control logic to keep the robot on the line. That's a pretty simple scenario, objects exist in the parallax exchange to handle things like Kalman Filtering for autopilots or the bell 202 modem object for radio communications.

I'm currently interning with an intellectual properties office for a very large company (international). It takes a lot of legal power to make IP worth keeping around. If you can handle the responsibility, IP should make just about as much income as any other business group selling products. It's all about hunting down opportunities to sell your ideas or sue the pants off the people who have taken them.