6 ms·

I am wondering if the huge IP theft is mostly propaganda similar to the one US uses before it starts a war or changes some government in other country.

craigsmansion 7y ago
It depends. The most well-known and common form of "IP theft" is cheaply made Chinese knock-offs that are forgeries. That's trademark infringement. It's not that big of a problem. What is an actual problematic form of "IP theft" is China appropriating trade-secrets. The bulk of "IP theft" that is used to fuel the current war of words seems to be patent infringement. Patent infringement sounds problematic, but really isn't. Even though China can produce devices that infringe, they can't sell those goods back to areas of the world where patent enforcement isn't as lax. They can sell them in China and that's a large market, but: - companies buying cheaply produced local copies weren't likely to buy the real thing in the first place. - Local copies are of inferior quality. By the time the local copies approach the quality of the original, they will be priced in the same ballpark as the original (and the original will be on the next generation). So yes, there is "IP theft" going on, but once again the term "IP" is being thrown around to obfuscate matters to support a political end and reality is quite a bit more complex but not as threatening as it's made out to be.
- patentatt 7y ago
  That ignores the advancing production capabilities and the vast grey market that moves goods into the US. That and the complacency of Amazon produce a situation where high quality knock offs can be made in China and find their way into the US market quite easily. Note: I’m speaking not of trademark infringement but patent infringement. It’s really no different. Patent infringement is problematic.
  - simion314 7y ago
    And instead of blocking the import of those fake products or the ones that infringe some IP (hopefully after you prove that) the US is blocking Huawei because of security concerns and instead of trying to find if there are backdoors in Huawei products, discussing how can we detect this backdoors, compare this backdoors with the ones in US products we are trying to switch the narative to the cheap Chinese products that are imported by US companies into US.
- simonh 7y ago
  A lot of this takes the form of a Western company contracting a Chinese manufacturer to make some goods for it. The company pays for research and development, specialist tooling and such. They contract the factory to make 10,000 widgets. They then find thousands of the exact same widgets on the market in China. The factory just makes more and sells them directly.
  - simion314 7y ago
    Is this illegal in China? If yes is there an example of someone trying to get justice for this?
patentatt 7y ago
As an IP lawyer who has been involved in several cases involving Chinese appropriation of trade secrets and/or patents ... it’s real. Smart companies don’t even try any more, just accept that if they do any business with any Chinese nationals, their secrets will be exfiltrated. And if you patent something, it will be used in China and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s just an accepted cost of doing business these days because IP enforcement in China is still nonexistent. The courts are so corrupt and openly biased against any outsiders. The rule of law is not valued, plain and simple.
- simion314 7y ago
  Can you give a good example similar to what you experienced? The issue is that we read daily about ridiculous patents.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - shuckles 7y ago
    I have noticed that the “reader mode” feature in UC Browser, the most popular browser in China, directly lifted the JavaScript from a similar feature in an American company’s product. Internal bug references, and all.
    - simion314 7y ago
      Interesting, the reader mode has many open source implementations. But I am sure you can find similar cases in ot6her countries, I was wondering some important case/example like China stealing Windows code and making their own not some small company there pirated some software, that happens in other places too.
      - shuckles 7y ago
        UC Browser is developed by Alibaba, one of China’s biggest companies. It’s easy to spot instances of stolen JavaScript because it’s injected into the page. Who knows what else they’ve stolen. This is not an open source implementation we’re talking about. There are rumors that much of Huawei’s network stack was stolen from Cisco and Juniper through government-mandated partnerships.
yogthos 7y ago
My view is that IP is fundamentally a terrible idea and should be abolished. All it does is help incumbent companies and prevents competition.
- simion314 7y ago
  The initial idea had some merit but the implementation is terrible and most countries had no choice and had to implement the US copyright and related laws.
- thkim 7y ago
  This is a naive thinking. Advances in software industry are purely intellectual so it doesn't involve heavy cost, which is why open source idea can work and be argued that it promotes innovation. Say you are a pharmaceutical company developing a new drug, investing billions of dollars. If there is no IP, why do it? You need to wake up to reality.
  - simion314 7y ago
    You could pay researchers with money from taxes, then you will get more research into important problems and less into rich people concerns like baldness and beauty creams. Mathematicians,physicists also do a lot of research and they do not ask you to pay them to use their findings.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - thkim 7y ago
      You seem to confuse between basic science and applied science. What you are saying is government should direct resources to every research. Basically saying that planned economy is better off than market economy. I wouldn't say market economy is a complete solution but time and again it has been proven to work better than planned economy. And also, why do you look down on applications? They are what actually make people's life better.
jjcc 7y ago
It's quite mixed and complicated. US government/media exaggerated and distort the situation or the nature of the problem intentionally or unintentionally that mislead Western public. A lot of Chinese admit that there are problems due to many factors. Things are already improved significantly compared to 20 years ago. But the progress will follow it's own pace, not external pressure.

craigsmansion 7y ago

It depends. The most well-known and common form of "IP theft" is cheaply made Chinese knock-offs that are forgeries. That's trademark infringement. It's not that big of a problem. What is an actual problematic form of "IP theft" is China appropriating trade-secrets. The bulk of "IP theft" that is used to fuel the current war of words seems to be patent infringement. Patent infringement sounds problematic, but really isn't. Even though China can produce devices that infringe, they can't sell those goods back to areas of the world where patent enforcement isn't as lax. They can sell them in China and that's a large market, but: - companies buying cheaply produced local copies weren't likely to buy the real thing in the first place. - Local copies are of inferior quality. By the time the local copies approach the quality of the original, they will be priced in the same ballpark as the original (and the original will be on the next generation). So yes, there is "IP theft" going on, but once again the term "IP" is being thrown around to obfuscate matters to support a political end and reality is quite a bit more complex but not as threatening as it's made out to be.

patentatt 7y ago
That ignores the advancing production capabilities and the vast grey market that moves goods into the US. That and the complacency of Amazon produce a situation where high quality knock offs can be made in China and find their way into the US market quite easily. Note: I’m speaking not of trademark infringement but patent infringement. It’s really no different. Patent infringement is problematic.
- simion314 7y ago
  And instead of blocking the import of those fake products or the ones that infringe some IP (hopefully after you prove that) the US is blocking Huawei because of security concerns and instead of trying to find if there are backdoors in Huawei products, discussing how can we detect this backdoors, compare this backdoors with the ones in US products we are trying to switch the narative to the cheap Chinese products that are imported by US companies into US.
simonh 7y ago
A lot of this takes the form of a Western company contracting a Chinese manufacturer to make some goods for it. The company pays for research and development, specialist tooling and such. They contract the factory to make 10,000 widgets. They then find thousands of the exact same widgets on the market in China. The factory just makes more and sells them directly.
- simion314 7y ago
  Is this illegal in China? If yes is there an example of someone trying to get justice for this?

patentatt 7y ago

As an IP lawyer who has been involved in several cases involving Chinese appropriation of trade secrets and/or patents ... it’s real. Smart companies don’t even try any more, just accept that if they do any business with any Chinese nationals, their secrets will be exfiltrated. And if you patent something, it will be used in China and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s just an accepted cost of doing business these days because IP enforcement in China is still nonexistent. The courts are so corrupt and openly biased against any outsiders. The rule of law is not valued, plain and simple.

simion314 7y ago
Can you give a good example similar to what you experienced? The issue is that we read daily about ridiculous patents.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- shuckles 7y ago
  I have noticed that the “reader mode” feature in UC Browser, the most popular browser in China, directly lifted the JavaScript from a similar feature in an American company’s product. Internal bug references, and all.
  - simion314 7y ago
    Interesting, the reader mode has many open source implementations. But I am sure you can find similar cases in ot6her countries, I was wondering some important case/example like China stealing Windows code and making their own not some small company there pirated some software, that happens in other places too.
    - shuckles 7y ago
      UC Browser is developed by Alibaba, one of China’s biggest companies. It’s easy to spot instances of stolen JavaScript because it’s injected into the page. Who knows what else they’ve stolen. This is not an open source implementation we’re talking about. There are rumors that much of Huawei’s network stack was stolen from Cisco and Juniper through government-mandated partnerships.

yogthos 7y ago

My view is that IP is fundamentally a terrible idea and should be abolished. All it does is help incumbent companies and prevents competition.

simion314 7y ago
The initial idea had some merit but the implementation is terrible and most countries had no choice and had to implement the US copyright and related laws.
thkim 7y ago
This is a naive thinking. Advances in software industry are purely intellectual so it doesn't involve heavy cost, which is why open source idea can work and be argued that it promotes innovation. Say you are a pharmaceutical company developing a new drug, investing billions of dollars. If there is no IP, why do it? You need to wake up to reality.
- simion314 7y ago
  You could pay researchers with money from taxes, then you will get more research into important problems and less into rich people concerns like baldness and beauty creams. Mathematicians,physicists also do a lot of research and they do not ask you to pay them to use their findings.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - thkim 7y ago
    You seem to confuse between basic science and applied science. What you are saying is government should direct resources to every research. Basically saying that planned economy is better off than market economy. I wouldn't say market economy is a complete solution but time and again it has been proven to work better than planned economy. And also, why do you look down on applications? They are what actually make people's life better.

jjcc 7y ago

It's quite mixed and complicated. US government/media exaggerated and distort the situation or the nature of the problem intentionally or unintentionally that mislead Western public. A lot of Chinese admit that there are problems due to many factors. Things are already improved significantly compared to 20 years ago. But the progress will follow it's own pace, not external pressure.