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Chinese brands get constantly harassed by Apple lawyers in the US about patents. Now that China is an important market for Apple, I find it hard to feel sorry f

Chinese brands get constantly harassed by Apple lawyers in the US about patents. Now that China is an important market for Apple, I find it hard to feel sorry for Apple getting a taste of their own medicine.

nxzero 10y ago
Not hard to believe, but would it be possible to provide an example or two of Apple winning a patent claim in court via a ruling in China? I would find it hard to believe the for a valid claim that just because a company is Chinese that it would have any impact on a case in the America.
- jdmichal 10y ago
  I read it as, the Chinese companies (or their US subsidiary) get sued in US courts for US patents. With that reading, I'm not sure your request makes sense.
- sangnoir 10y ago
  While not a Chinese company, I remember Samsung winning an ITC import ban of Apple products. Obama promptly overturned/vetoed the ban[1]. I do not doubt for a second that american institutions (especially the executive) do what is best for "American Interests" 1. http://www.fastcompany.com/3015243/where-are-they-now/obama-vetos-older-apple-gadget-import-ban http://www.fastcompany.com/3015243/where-are-they-now/obama-...
pinaceae 10y ago
oh these poor, poor chinese knock-offs that get harrassed, harrassed! by apple lawyers. now where is the iphone produced again? it's a chinese phone sans the IP (designed by apple in cali).
- umanwizard 10y ago
  The iPhone is assembled in China, but all the really complicated parts (screen, radio, processor, ...) are made elsewhere.
- 20andup 10y ago
  Quite condescending. Definitely not what I expect from a post on hacker news. There was no mention that these companies created Chinese knockoffs. On the other hand, I see it as a patent dispute by predatory companies.
wahsd 10y ago
That's a rather imbalanced perspective. China has grown not through organic development and innovation, but through global, state sponsored, commercial espionage; and in a country where the state is inextricably linked to even the "private" corporations. I'm no fan of Apple's ways sometimes, but it's like comparing a borderline unscrupulous business to an organized crime outfit. It would not surprise me one bit if this whole "patent violation" is nothing but a sham to fool people like you into believing there's some legitimacy behind efforts to sabotage Apple taking over the market from Chinese firms / state control.
xienze 10y ago
Hmm I feel quite the opposite here. China has a, um, less than stellar record when it comes to prosecuting Chinese companies that engage in IP theft and patent infringement. But then they want to get high and mighty when the shoe is on the other foot...
3pt14159 10y ago
...Shouldn't they? China is great in many ways, but it's IP / Copyright protection is abysmal and is used by the state as propaganda / propaganda control. Portray China negatively in a film? Oh look, no sales the few theatres that are showing it have the scenes altered and of course don't pay royalties. Neutrally portray China? Oh look about 1% of the royalties you were supposed to get. Portray China positively? Blockbuster Chinese release. Unprecedented sales, collect nearly 80% of the royalties you were supposed to. They have the same Real Politik handle on technology. They're not going to respect American Patents until it suits them. Not to say we're blameless; but if it is too asymmetrical I could see the west imposing levies to rectify the imbalance.
- progressive_dad 10y ago
  The US needs to set some ground rules with our Chinese rivals... Start with requiring occupancy of all homes held by foreign nationals, trusts or investment groups, or you pay enormous property tax increases. Then you require all US businesses selling consumer products to staff at least 1 US resident inspector for each stage of the supply chain from raw goods to finished product. If the host country doesn't like it, then you can't do business with that host country. This inspector may be called before Congress to answer personally (with jail time) for any human rights abuses not reported in the supply chain.
  - yompers888 10y ago
    On the first point, can't that be achieved by the municipality which (presumably) also assesses those property taxes? That just seems like an issue of the city needing to not whore themselves out to foreign speculators in the name of growth. On the bright side, I've heard from some realtors that the previously-common occurrence of Chinese nationals patrolling for houses to buy with cash has dropped off substantially in 2016.
  - sheepleherd 10y ago
    Yeah but the world is not a pretty place, at home we have monopolistic unicorns, and abroad we have unfair business practices... I'm not shedding any tears for Apple, screw'em. Even if the US is a relatively "clean" place to do business today, when we were the up and coming upstart, we stole plenty of ideas from abroad, and even within: the whole reason synecdotal Hollywood is in literal Hollywood is, movie producers snuck out there from the East Coast so they could infringe on Edison's film patents and get away with it. Relatively poorer economies are never going to sit by and let large foreign industries dominate their economies if they can do anything about it. And we shouldn't expect relatively poorer economies to have deeply embedded free market economists explaining the theory of comparative advantage to every populist politician.
vvanders 10y ago
Yup, used to work for HTC and some of the bullshit that Apple used to pull still pisses me off to this day. Remember the whole "click on a phone-number launch dialer" patent? We pulled the feature in the US phones, following the letter of the law since we lost the suit(back when Apple was going for Mfgrs instead of Google). Apple filed an injunction with Customs right as we went into a huge marketing push for one of our devices. We had millions of phones sitting on the docks while FTC "investigated". 4-5 weeks later it was found that we hadn't violated, Apple never paid any fines and we had a ton of pissed off customers who couldn't get phones. http://www.wired.com/2012/05/apples-patent-win-delays-shipments-of-two-htc-smartphones/ http://www.wired.com/2012/05/apples-patent-win-delays-shipme...
- uremog 10y ago
  But really how could a patent officer think such a thing is worthy of a patent?
  - aserafini 10y ago
    Agreed, this should never have been a patent.
  - WildUtah 10y ago
    Patent examiners don't have discretion. The special patent court (CAFC) is filled with patent lawyers that decide cases based on their own personal interest in a more expansive patent system. Except where the Supreme Court reviews their cases, they have total power to set precedents and those precedents always favor trolls over creators and innovators. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-a-rogue-appeals-court-wrecked-the-patent-system/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-a-rogue-appea...
    - stcredzero 10y ago
      I've traded comments with those guys on reddit. They live in a completely different reality. And people said Steve Jobs had a "reality distortion field." He had nothing on those guys.
blisterpeanuts 10y ago
>> Now that China is an important market for Apple, I find it hard to feel sorry for Apple getting a taste of their own medicine. Even if the plaintiff is a patent troll, or merely an obscure company with a bogus patent? Even if this "patent tribunal" ruled incorrectly because of bias toward the domestic company? Even if the tribunal had been bribed by the company (pure speculation, but bribery is how you get things done in China's bureaucracy)? I don't tend to have emotions one way or the other about these kinds of commercial and legal disputes, but corruption and patent trolling seems a lot more likely than big evil Apple stealing the innocent Baili Co.'s intellectual property and getting their comeuppance.
ryao 10y ago
Is it possible that the 100C was based on iPhone 6 mock ups that leaked and the Chinese company copied it to get it to market first? This would not be the first time this happened: http://www.androidauthority.com/goophone-sue-apple-china-112190/ http://www.androidauthority.com/goophone-sue-apple-china-112...
- WildUtah 10y ago
  That's how design patents work in the USA, also. If you can get secret designs from a competitor and patent them first, you can then wait for the product to become popular and sue. And design patents are not considered to require examination as to content in the USA. They're just approved if the forms are filled out correctly. And if any part of the design of a product (even just one rounded corner on a $700 phone) resembles a patented design, you're entitled to 100% of the profit ever made on that product in the USA. China is nowhere near that shifty.
- NEDM64 10y ago
  Doesn't need to. It's very different from the 6, and Apple has launched the iPod Touch in 2012, which is practically identical to the 2014 iPhone 6.
ellyagg 10y ago
Is there a name for a logical fallacy where actions are claimed to be morally equivalent if merely their shapes are the same and regardless of the details?
- sker 10y ago
  False equivalence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence I see it all the time on the Internet: - Atheists are "just as bad as" [insert religious group with millennia-old history of atrocities.] -- Just because they both try to convince you of something. - Politician A is "just as corrupt as" Politician B. -- Nevermind that A just gave his cousin a job, while B gave away $500B in contracts to his sponsors.
Razengan 10y ago
"Own medicine?" Have you somehow missed China's bizarre and BLATANT copying and ripoffs of just about every single popular product on the planet for the last two decades? I live in a third-world country, where it has become almost impossible to get basic stuff (tools, lights, everyday household items) that doesn't break down after a month thanks to cheap Chinese knockoffs shamelessly muscling every other company off the local market. Almost nobody wants to stock "genuine" brands. Even if I wasn't an Apple fan I would be rooting for them here; they seem to be the only company big enough to fight back against China's crap.
- Razengan 10y ago
  "Almost impossible" may be a slight exaggeration in a few major cities here, but otherwise the frustration still holds true. The worst part about this glut of Chinese products is that there's no one to complain to; nowhere to get customer support from, and you can't easily know who to avoid either because one company may make essentially the same thing in a hundred different guises with slight visual variation but the same lack of quality or safety control. As for all the imitations, I don't even know why they do this. Why pretend to be a popular brand (sometimes with a slightly different logo and/or a typo in the name) instead of selling your own product and identity? Why make people the world over have to be consciously vigilant about avoiding Chinese imitations? What are they hoping to prove? Back in the 80s and early 90s, "Made in Japan" became a synonym for quality and people sought out products with that written on them. China may have made their name globally relevant but to the general public it has become synonymous with shoddiness.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

nxzero 10y ago

Not hard to believe, but would it be possible to provide an example or two of Apple winning a patent claim in court via a ruling in China? I would find it hard to believe the for a valid claim that just because a company is Chinese that it would have any impact on a case in the America.

jdmichal 10y ago
I read it as, the Chinese companies (or their US subsidiary) get sued in US courts for US patents. With that reading, I'm not sure your request makes sense.
sangnoir 10y ago
While not a Chinese company, I remember Samsung winning an ITC import ban of Apple products. Obama promptly overturned/vetoed the ban[1]. I do not doubt for a second that american institutions (especially the executive) do what is best for "American Interests" 1. http://www.fastcompany.com/3015243/where-are-they-now/obama-vetos-older-apple-gadget-import-ban http://www.fastcompany.com/3015243/where-are-they-now/obama-...

pinaceae 10y ago

oh these poor, poor chinese knock-offs that get harrassed, harrassed! by apple lawyers. now where is the iphone produced again? it's a chinese phone sans the IP (designed by apple in cali).

umanwizard 10y ago
The iPhone is assembled in China, but all the really complicated parts (screen, radio, processor, ...) are made elsewhere.
20andup 10y ago
Quite condescending. Definitely not what I expect from a post on hacker news. There was no mention that these companies created Chinese knockoffs. On the other hand, I see it as a patent dispute by predatory companies.

wahsd 10y ago

That's a rather imbalanced perspective. China has grown not through organic development and innovation, but through global, state sponsored, commercial espionage; and in a country where the state is inextricably linked to even the "private" corporations. I'm no fan of Apple's ways sometimes, but it's like comparing a borderline unscrupulous business to an organized crime outfit. It would not surprise me one bit if this whole "patent violation" is nothing but a sham to fool people like you into believing there's some legitimacy behind efforts to sabotage Apple taking over the market from Chinese firms / state control.

xienze 10y ago

Hmm I feel quite the opposite here. China has a, um, less than stellar record when it comes to prosecuting Chinese companies that engage in IP theft and patent infringement. But then they want to get high and mighty when the shoe is on the other foot...

3pt14159 10y ago

...Shouldn't they? China is great in many ways, but it's IP / Copyright protection is abysmal and is used by the state as propaganda / propaganda control. Portray China negatively in a film? Oh look, no sales the few theatres that are showing it have the scenes altered and of course don't pay royalties. Neutrally portray China? Oh look about 1% of the royalties you were supposed to get. Portray China positively? Blockbuster Chinese release. Unprecedented sales, collect nearly 80% of the royalties you were supposed to. They have the same Real Politik handle on technology. They're not going to respect American Patents until it suits them. Not to say we're blameless; but if it is too asymmetrical I could see the west imposing levies to rectify the imbalance.

progressive_dad 10y ago
The US needs to set some ground rules with our Chinese rivals... Start with requiring occupancy of all homes held by foreign nationals, trusts or investment groups, or you pay enormous property tax increases. Then you require all US businesses selling consumer products to staff at least 1 US resident inspector for each stage of the supply chain from raw goods to finished product. If the host country doesn't like it, then you can't do business with that host country. This inspector may be called before Congress to answer personally (with jail time) for any human rights abuses not reported in the supply chain.
- yompers888 10y ago
  On the first point, can't that be achieved by the municipality which (presumably) also assesses those property taxes? That just seems like an issue of the city needing to not whore themselves out to foreign speculators in the name of growth. On the bright side, I've heard from some realtors that the previously-common occurrence of Chinese nationals patrolling for houses to buy with cash has dropped off substantially in 2016.
- sheepleherd 10y ago
  Yeah but the world is not a pretty place, at home we have monopolistic unicorns, and abroad we have unfair business practices... I'm not shedding any tears for Apple, screw'em. Even if the US is a relatively "clean" place to do business today, when we were the up and coming upstart, we stole plenty of ideas from abroad, and even within: the whole reason synecdotal Hollywood is in literal Hollywood is, movie producers snuck out there from the East Coast so they could infringe on Edison's film patents and get away with it. Relatively poorer economies are never going to sit by and let large foreign industries dominate their economies if they can do anything about it. And we shouldn't expect relatively poorer economies to have deeply embedded free market economists explaining the theory of comparative advantage to every populist politician.

vvanders 10y ago

Yup, used to work for HTC and some of the bullshit that Apple used to pull still pisses me off to this day. Remember the whole "click on a phone-number launch dialer" patent? We pulled the feature in the US phones, following the letter of the law since we lost the suit(back when Apple was going for Mfgrs instead of Google). Apple filed an injunction with Customs right as we went into a huge marketing push for one of our devices. We had millions of phones sitting on the docks while FTC "investigated". 4-5 weeks later it was found that we hadn't violated, Apple never paid any fines and we had a ton of pissed off customers who couldn't get phones. http://www.wired.com/2012/05/apples-patent-win-delays-shipments-of-two-htc-smartphones/ http://www.wired.com/2012/05/apples-patent-win-delays-shipme...

uremog 10y ago
But really how could a patent officer think such a thing is worthy of a patent?
- aserafini 10y ago
  Agreed, this should never have been a patent.
- WildUtah 10y ago
  Patent examiners don't have discretion. The special patent court (CAFC) is filled with patent lawyers that decide cases based on their own personal interest in a more expansive patent system. Except where the Supreme Court reviews their cases, they have total power to set precedents and those precedents always favor trolls over creators and innovators. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-a-rogue-appeals-court-wrecked-the-patent-system/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-a-rogue-appea...
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    I've traded comments with those guys on reddit. They live in a completely different reality. And people said Steve Jobs had a "reality distortion field." He had nothing on those guys.

blisterpeanuts 10y ago

>> Now that China is an important market for Apple, I find it hard to feel sorry for Apple getting a taste of their own medicine. Even if the plaintiff is a patent troll, or merely an obscure company with a bogus patent? Even if this "patent tribunal" ruled incorrectly because of bias toward the domestic company? Even if the tribunal had been bribed by the company (pure speculation, but bribery is how you get things done in China's bureaucracy)? I don't tend to have emotions one way or the other about these kinds of commercial and legal disputes, but corruption and patent trolling seems a lot more likely than big evil Apple stealing the innocent Baili Co.'s intellectual property and getting their comeuppance.

ryao 10y ago

Is it possible that the 100C was based on iPhone 6 mock ups that leaked and the Chinese company copied it to get it to market first? This would not be the first time this happened: http://www.androidauthority.com/goophone-sue-apple-china-112190/ http://www.androidauthority.com/goophone-sue-apple-china-112...

WildUtah 10y ago
That's how design patents work in the USA, also. If you can get secret designs from a competitor and patent them first, you can then wait for the product to become popular and sue. And design patents are not considered to require examination as to content in the USA. They're just approved if the forms are filled out correctly. And if any part of the design of a product (even just one rounded corner on a $700 phone) resembles a patented design, you're entitled to 100% of the profit ever made on that product in the USA. China is nowhere near that shifty.
NEDM64 10y ago
Doesn't need to. It's very different from the 6, and Apple has launched the iPod Touch in 2012, which is practically identical to the 2014 iPhone 6.

ellyagg 10y ago

Is there a name for a logical fallacy where actions are claimed to be morally equivalent if merely their shapes are the same and regardless of the details?

sker 10y ago
False equivalence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence I see it all the time on the Internet: - Atheists are "just as bad as" [insert religious group with millennia-old history of atrocities.] -- Just because they both try to convince you of something. - Politician A is "just as corrupt as" Politician B. -- Nevermind that A just gave his cousin a job, while B gave away $500B in contracts to his sponsors.

Razengan 10y ago

"Own medicine?" Have you somehow missed China's bizarre and BLATANT copying and ripoffs of just about every single popular product on the planet for the last two decades? I live in a third-world country, where it has become almost impossible to get basic stuff (tools, lights, everyday household items) that doesn't break down after a month thanks to cheap Chinese knockoffs shamelessly muscling every other company off the local market. Almost nobody wants to stock "genuine" brands. Even if I wasn't an Apple fan I would be rooting for them here; they seem to be the only company big enough to fight back against China's crap.

Razengan 10y ago
"Almost impossible" may be a slight exaggeration in a few major cities here, but otherwise the frustration still holds true. The worst part about this glut of Chinese products is that there's no one to complain to; nowhere to get customer support from, and you can't easily know who to avoid either because one company may make essentially the same thing in a hundred different guises with slight visual variation but the same lack of quality or safety control. As for all the imitations, I don't even know why they do this. Why pretend to be a popular brand (sometimes with a slightly different logo and/or a typo in the name) instead of selling your own product and identity? Why make people the world over have to be consciously vigilant about avoiding Chinese imitations? What are they hoping to prove? Back in the 80s and early 90s, "Made in Japan" became a synonym for quality and people sought out products with that written on them. China may have made their name globally relevant but to the general public it has become synonymous with shoddiness.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]