Law is a group of people agreeing to threaten other people's well being if they don't do things a certain way. A business is a group of people agreeing to share access to a pool of resources utilizing the threat of law. It's all just people is what I'm getting at. Putting on labels like "mega-corporation" and "small business" just muddies the waters, especially when the general consensus is mega-corp = bad, small business = good. I was attempting to remove the stigma of the chosen labels.
But now I'm rethinking my mapping from mega-corp to large group and small business to small group. Both are more like a small groups of people, the owners, with a varying amount of resources to trade for goods and services (supplies, manufacturing, workers, bribes, etc). The smaller group doesn't necessarily have less resources. And now the idea of a group is muddying the waters, why not just consider them a person? So the question becomes, is it ethical for a person with more resources to copy the technology of a person with less resources without giving something in return? Hell, now the difference in available resources is getting in the way. Is it ethical for a person to copy another person without giving something in return? Keep in mind that copying works both ways. My answer is still yes.