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Samsung's folding screen tech has been stolen and sold to China
- PHGamer 8y agogotta love good ol corporate espionage. at this point companies are going to have to act like military.
- AceJohnny2 8y agoFunny you should say that. Companies are hiring ex-Intelligence people to handle such things.
- newnewpdro 8y agoIt's probably a good thing, security hygiene in the private sector has been laughably neglected for far too long.
- thefounder 8y agoThey already do that. On WallStreet they've been doing it for years(i.e hire ex MI6/Mossad/CIA). I don't see why it wouldn't happen in other sectors.
- Ftuuky 8y agoCompetitive intelligence has been integral part of big companies for decades.
- kurthr 8y agoWhat is interesting is that it is the edge molding technology that has been reported stolen... which means it's either really difficult or a side show to all the other challenging parts of a foldable phone. I don't doubt that there is a lot of mechanical engineering difficulty in getting a design like this to MP and that one long difficult to manufacture pole could make it or break it as a product.
- toss1 8y agoSamsung's $130 million investment over years, sold out to Chinese firms for $14 million. To the Chinese, theft of IP is just business as usual. Every single firm I've personally encountered that has done biz in China has either already had their IP stolen and sold in competition with it (or just products sold out the back door w/o label), or fully expects that it would happen and takes strong defensive strategies, e.g., sending pre-mixed materials to China where they only do the final process. This is not sustainable. While the West thinks that we were exploiting China for it's cheap labor, the Chinese had a much longer range view -- they were exploiting our myopic lust for short-term profits to get our most valuable assets and gain long-term strategic advantage, both in both commercial and military technology. This is likely to go down as one of history's greatest strategic blunders. I wonder if it has already gone too far for us to recover.
- ObsoleteNerd 8y agoChina has been playing the "international trade" game for longer than most western cultures have existed. To ever think that the US/etc were taking advantage of them, was naive at best. China knows exactly what they're doing.
- FakeComments 8y agoWho seriously thought the US was taking advantage of China? The WTO riots in Seattle were partly because this was an obviously dumb strategy that sold out the well-being of the public for the enrichment of a few elites.
- teachrdan 8y agoThose WTO protests/riots happened exactly 19 years ago today.
- ggm 8y agoWhich historically is what the USA did regarding European ipr in the nineteenth century. And Europe did to China in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Wedgewood porcelain and Sevres...
- genericone 8y agoNow, were these two Chinese companies state-run companies, or is that just a given based on the advanced technology involved?
- outworlder 8y ago> Now, were these two Chinese companies state-run companies Does the concept even apply?
- MrTonyD 8y agoI'm not even sure if its possible to tell ownership these days. Here in Silicon Valley I saw some contracts I wasn't supposed to see - all with labels saying "disclosure not required" and "not legally required to provide copies". Basically, ownership can be held by a company, and that can be a legal casino, so it can place bets which transfer ownership to anyone in the future (eg. if support costs over 10% then 50% is owned by China). These documents were used to arrange Russian ownership of several NSA "front" companies - all without any public disclosures since they were potential futures, not current reality. That is the world we live in. (And I don't claim to really understand those contracts. I just know somebody who knows somebody who was working on the contracts for foreign entities to secretly hold ownership of a bunch of Silicon Valley companies. I took a look, saw the list of famous companies involved, and happen to know a couple of NSA front companies which were also on the list.) And in a court of law I will claim that I made all this up.
- sjroot 8y agoAre there any Chinese companies that don’t operate under the influence (if not direct ownership) of their government?
- NicoJuicy 8y agoHere I go again, I see the fear of China rising: Support for "Made in India 2025" seems to be the only viable alternative. Why? See my other post below
- vimy 8y agoWhy India? If we're gonna move everything we can as well try to move it closer to home. Europe/USA. But it will take longer than 2025.
- NicoJuicy 8y agoBecause they have 1 billion people and wages are low. This can only work (fast), when big corps can keep their profits. The world is not perfect I'm afraid.
- optimiz3 8y ago> Why? See my ( very recent) comment history. No one is here for a homework assignment. Please explain yourself to add to the discussion.
- NicoJuicy 8y ago> I'll repeat it again, my solution would be: Support for Made in India 2025. Greed won't disappear, but you can shift the balance to a more western friendly country. They are already destroying a lot of countries. They borrow money to them, so the Chinese can build their infrastructure. But there are almost no locals involved, so all the artificial inflation goes to China. The belt is just an excuse for colonizing the world ( or at least the harbors, strategic airports that they themselves have built, see Sri Lanka, they are the first to comply). I think a lot of those countries that built a dam with Chinese money forget that maintenance costs a lot also. Reference: FIFA football stadiums Ps. Feel free to share your concern
- point78 8y agoFor dirty, undermining business practices no one beats the Chinese. Their product quality is also terrible.
- mattnewton 8y agoPretty broad brush don’t you think?
- lainga 8y agoPointillism, China's industrial espionage activities are not.
- shanghaiaway 8y agoFor dirty, undermining business practices no one beats the Americans. Their product quality is also terrible.
- tehlike 8y agoOne of the rationale behind trade wars.
- cromwellian 8y agoI assume it is patented, so won't this matter only for the Chinese domestic market? I assume internationally, they'd lose all their court cases, and injunctions would block any Chinese companies trying to sell these components to Western, Korean, or Japanese integrators.
- jfktrey 8y agoDon’t be too quick to discount it. That’s a massive market.
- cromwellian 8y agoTrue, but I also assume Samsung could take this case to the WTO and would get other nations to file friendly supporting briefs, perhaps leading to trade sanctions. Eventually, the international community made be forced to make this expensive enough that the costs outweigh the benefits.
- gruez 8y agochina has been doing this for years. what makes you think that this time will be any different?
- malandrew 8y agoIf China continues down this path to stealing everyone's tech, it's in the interest of all other countries to shut them out of the international market until they play fair.
- johnpmayer 8y agoUnless it turns out that strong protections for intellectual property rights isn't correlated with the survival of a sovereign nation. Then it won't matter how loudly the international community complains; China will just do its thing. They're large enough and have the agricultural and industrial base to weather isolation in the way that Iran/Russia do not.
- trevyn 8y agoSurvive? Sure. Thrive by global standards with trade restrictions? Not a chance.
- ndnxhs 8y agoOr maybe everyone should join them and remove the redicoulus concept that you can own an idea
- TeMPOraL 8y agoOr at least tone them down quite a bit. It's fair to have some degree of protection over an invention that required years of work of possibly multiple people, and a lot of money. But I don't see how protecting it for longer than ~5 years is justified.
- ndnxhs 8y agoEspecially when your "invention" is just a vauge document describing something you have never built but now prevent anyone else from ever building it as well
- newnewpdro 8y agoIs China stealing everyone's tech, or just the US and US allies?
- fspeech 8y agoThis is a bad report as the reporter doesn't even bother finding out who the accused are. See https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-samsung-elec/south-korea-indicts-group-for-leaking-samsung-display-tech-to-chinese-firm-idUSKCN1NY17K https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-samsung-elec/south-... The accused seller of technology is not some no name entity. Toptec is a publicly traded equipment maker, which incidentally is South Korean, not Chinese.
- jayd16 8y agoThe article says the buyers are Chinese not the seller.
- zachguo 8y agoTypical click-bait title. It's actually a korean company being sued. http://www.toptec.co.kr/ http://www.toptec.co.kr/ This piece from Reuters includes more details: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-samsung-elec/south-korea-indicts-group-for-leaking-samsung-display-tech-to-chinese-firm-idUSKCN1NY17K https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-samsung-elec/south-... I guess someone in Samsung was just mad about the fact the world's first foldable phone was made by a Chinese company. https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/11/5/18067116/royole-flexpai-flexible-display-foldable-smartphone-tablet-pricing-features-release-date https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/11/5/18067116/r...
- baybal2 8y agoNo, that phone uses Samsung's panel
- jayd16 8y agoThe article claims the buyers are Chinese. The seller is who is being sued though. I suppose buying stolen goods is also illegal but yeah... it is odd they focus on the nationality of the buyers.
- izacus 8y agoIt's not odd at all - once you understand the goal is to smear Chinese again. Look at comments even in this topic - there's already ranting against China here. Not even HNers cared enough to read about who stole what. The propaganda objective has been reached.
- reilly3000 8y agoThat shit was stolen from Xerox circa 2004. They had working flexible monitor prototypes back then. I worked as a phone rep for a little Xerox agency while I was in college. I setup their first AdWords campaign because I hated cold calling for selling toner refills and copier upgrade so very much. Xerox corporate marketing site was advertising flexible monitors on their homepage - a page I must have viewed 1200+ times. I can't find that URL on the wayback machine, but I did find a contemporaneous article: https://books.google.com/books?id=1VRuoq7h2FcC&lpg=PA503&ots=dTZxMvfhFz&dq=xerox%20flexible%20monitors&pg=PR3#v=onepage&q=xerox%20flexible%20monitors&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=1VRuoq7h2FcC&lpg=PA503&ots...
- PhasmaFelis 8y agoThey must have had insurmountable flaws if they were never visibly brought to market.
- adventured 8y agoRoutinely failing to bring its best tech to market was a Xerox specialization.
- jp555 8y agoOr maybe the screens would have retailed for something like $5000 each, in a market with little to no demand (eg: consumer video conferencing prior to smartphones). There are no bad ideas, just bad timing.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago> Or maybe the screens would have retailed for something like $5000 each That would be an insurmountable flaw, yes.
- neya 8y agoChina's strategy has always been the same - wait for others to bleed in their blood and money on R&D and when the technology is ripe and well working, simply rip it off effortlessly and sell it a lower price point, most of the times not even caring about quality/safety compromises. We saw this with the Japanese bullet trains, we saw this with self driving tech, and now it's display tech. You could argue that the consumers benefit the most over time. But it's definitely unfair to those who have dedicated their lives to researching these technologies, only to see it get stolen and even re-licensed as China's own (as what happened with the bullet trains). The rest of the world should stop playing by Chinese's rules and be firm in their stance like the US - Eg. if China doesn't enforce strict IP rules, then people should seek alternatives and stop dealing with them. Even India/Vietnam/Malaysia/etc. are better bets in comparison. Especially when these schemes are sponsored by the Chinese government 9 times out of 10.
- anonymous59u33 8y agoWasn’t that Japan’s strategy in the 70s and South Korea’s in the 90s? And I’m pretty sure that was the US strategy during the Industrial Revolution. Or the European strategy when it came to stealing Chinese silk making methods. I guess great powers steal alike.
- MagnumOpus 8y agoWhataboutism. As always, two Wrongs don’t make a Right, and OP is not even talking about the morality of it (everyone agrees it is immoral) but about countermeasures.
- Giorgi 8y agoWhy is it immoral? It is knowledge and information must be free. Copyright and patents etc are only holding mankind back.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- joejerryronnie 8y agoAll this stolen tech and trade war stuff is going to look quaint when the US and China engage in full scale military conflict 10 years from now.