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There are a few places where you can lodge strong protest and send legal notice: State Intellectual Property Office of China http://english.sipo.gov.cn/lxfs/ h

by kev6168 11y ago

There are a few places where you can lodge strong protest and send legal notice: State Intellectual Property Office of China http://english.sipo.gov.cn/lxfs/ http://english.sipo.gov.cn/lxfs/ China Internet Network Information Center http://www1.cnnic.cn/PublicS/hyzl/ http://www1.cnnic.cn/PublicS/hyzl/ You can send them emails or even better call them. They all should have people who can communicate in English effectively. Getting in contact with them will help you put pressure on the offender, and also gather info for next move. The best move is to hire someone from China to do some leg work for you, if that's necessary. No need for lawyers at first. There are many Chinese freelancers active in various international elance type sites. Also, http://www.witmart.com/ http://www.witmart.com/ is reputable, operating from China. China, at least the central government, is trying hard to implement tougher policies on protecting intellectual properties. The problems are mostly at the local level. If you know how to get the offenders' attention with effective threats on legal action, they are actually _very_ afraid of being caught. The cut-throat business competitions in China force them to avoid legal trouble and damage to their company's reputations, if they are legit startup trying to make it big, not some college students just playing around (in this case then you don't need to worry too much anyway). Also wholesale copying western ideas is a widespread popular practice, I feel you are fighting the wrong battle. There is no way you can prevent somebody else (meaning hundreds if the idea is really good) in China doing the same cloning shit. Also conquering the China market needs many many other types of fighting, and preventing cloning is the least you need to worry about.

bflesch 11y ago
Thanks your advice, kev6168! I will try to get in touch with those two authorities on Monday and maybe they can clear up the leverage we have. If you look at our website you see that we're using cheap bootstrap, so they are not really cloning our design asset, but the whole product / UX. They add some value for users by providing Chinese translations. They told us they already have investors, and it seems at least two people are working on this. Unfortunately I was unable to find any info about company registration or the actual investor. I sincerely hope that we can somehow work with them so we don't have to waste resources in fighting / worrying.
- kev6168 11y ago
  oh lots of 'fightings' are needed. Those fightings are very strange and pointless work to a westerner, but actually are the necessary and normal things to do in the Chinese business environment, things like 1. thorough research on whether it's in your best interests to operate in china now, _really important_, 2. much _much_ more carefully than you would do in Europe to examine your potential partners' credentials and validity of their claims, 3. establish connections with government officials (no, you don't need to go crazy on bribe or shady stuff, just good relationship and name recognition), 4, find capable and trusty locals to work together. The key for anyone to make it in China is to understand that although China is utterly different from the west, it is _NOT_ a random and chaos place. It has its own well-oiled system running for the most time successfully for millenniums! It's scary to foreigners because it's so different so people tend to avoid it altogether. But in fact every issue has a well established way to be dealt with, obvious to locals but not obvious to a foreigner. So getting there and doing the right moves, you might emerge victorious. Also in comparison to other industries, internet-related intellectual property protection is much easier to enforce by the Chinese central and local government, because they can order ISPs and Cloud service providers to pull plugs on the perpetrators web sites with enough poking from you or your liaison in China. Power to the censors and GFW related technologies! :) So be confident you will find ways to solve the problem. Good luck with your venture.

by kev6168 11y ago

bflesch 11y ago

Thanks your advice, kev6168! I will try to get in touch with those two authorities on Monday and maybe they can clear up the leverage we have. If you look at our website you see that we're using cheap bootstrap, so they are not really cloning our design asset, but the whole product / UX. They add some value for users by providing Chinese translations. They told us they already have investors, and it seems at least two people are working on this. Unfortunately I was unable to find any info about company registration or the actual investor. I sincerely hope that we can somehow work with them so we don't have to waste resources in fighting / worrying.

kev6168 11y ago
oh lots of 'fightings' are needed. Those fightings are very strange and pointless work to a westerner, but actually are the necessary and normal things to do in the Chinese business environment, things like 1. thorough research on whether it's in your best interests to operate in china now, _really important_, 2. much _much_ more carefully than you would do in Europe to examine your potential partners' credentials and validity of their claims, 3. establish connections with government officials (no, you don't need to go crazy on bribe or shady stuff, just good relationship and name recognition), 4, find capable and trusty locals to work together. The key for anyone to make it in China is to understand that although China is utterly different from the west, it is _NOT_ a random and chaos place. It has its own well-oiled system running for the most time successfully for millenniums! It's scary to foreigners because it's so different so people tend to avoid it altogether. But in fact every issue has a well established way to be dealt with, obvious to locals but not obvious to a foreigner. So getting there and doing the right moves, you might emerge victorious. Also in comparison to other industries, internet-related intellectual property protection is much easier to enforce by the Chinese central and local government, because they can order ISPs and Cloud service providers to pull plugs on the perpetrators web sites with enough poking from you or your liaison in China. Power to the censors and GFW related technologies! :) So be confident you will find ways to solve the problem. Good luck with your venture.