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I am amazed on how weak the accusations are. A ringtone? Some guy who thinks he can patent the idea of a camera attached to a smartphone? A hitpiece like this

• Hasknewbie 7y ago
  Ladies and gentlemen: products/firmware cloned so brazenly they have the same bugs, patents filed using documents from their rivals, operatives caught with thousands of confidential documents... "weak accusations". Huawei's baggage regarding IP theft is notorious, this article is nothing new, you can easily find others all the way back to 2003 when the Cisco/Huawei feud started getting coverage. What would be more productive is finding out if this is a case of chickens coming home to roust (now that Huawei has gone from B-grade/discount vendor to A-lister and a different level of accountability is expected), or if they're just yet another chip in the US-China trade war, as ZTE were last year.
• nova22033 7y ago
  Why is the camera attachment not a patentable idea> Huawei also holds patents for seemingly obvious things. https://patents.justia.com/patent/20190155499 https://patents.justia.com/patent/20190155499 https://patents.justia.com/patent/20190158530 https://patents.justia.com/patent/20190158530
• dspwizard 7y ago
  The most amusing part is that Huawei developed 5G tech on its own - nokia has shit and e/// is not better. Even in regards of 4G massive MIMO tech - Huawei is years ahead of other, they couldn't steal this tech from anyone - because one one had it.
  • ineedasername 7y ago
    It's rather more trivial to leapfrog an existing technology when you're able to steal & learn from all of the IP it's based on and then target your R&D efforts accordingly. You don't have to suffer the organizational difficulties of sunk costs, path dependency, legacy systems, etc. So even if their equipment is more advanced, they still got there on the back of massive IP theft.
    • ummonk 7y ago
      Isn't this why most people on HN and in the tech community writ-large oppose patents in tech? Faster innovation happens when IP protections aren't holding back innovation.
      • whenchamenia 7y ago
        Are you inferring that we let their continued violation a system we both agreed to, while following it ourselves, slide, because it kinda resembles your philosophy from a hazy distance?
        • chillacy 7y ago
          If some of us were trying to reform a defective system in the first place, then yes we’d rather the world didn’t just finalize on hamstringing the pace of innovation for the future.
      • ineedasername 7y ago
        I would myself advocate for looser patent grants. It seems wasteful that separate companies must redundantly spend resources treading down the same worn pathways. However, a system that circumvents that redundancy would require radically different & collaborative R&D arrangements to function equitably. In its absence, and in the presence of a system where single entities spend their own resources on development, IP theft is damaging. It assists in undercutting the bottom line and even driving out of business those companies that have been stolen from.
      • liability 7y ago
  • discreteevent 7y ago
    That may partly be because a lot of r&d departments that used to be there are now long gone because Huawei put them out of business. Not just by stealing but because it was nearly impossible to compete with a company who were backed again and again by the Chinese government despite failing many times.
    • codedokode 7y ago
      What is wrong with being backed by the government? Also, Wikipedia article on Echelon mentions a case of alleged industrial espionage by US: [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Examples_of_industrial_espionage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Examples_of_industrial...
  • mrep 7y ago
    > Huawei is years ahead of other, they couldn't steal this tech from anyone - because one one had it. Sources? I just spent 10+ minutes reading into this and only 2 out of the 10 i looked at suggested that and they were dubious at best. This one [0] had a decent overlook of the various companies but it didn't say anything at who was leading which isn't too surprising since I also cannot find any sources showing any company whatsoever actually deploying 5g en mass. Mostly just companies deploying lone cell towers to run tests and claim they have 5g. [0]: https://www.greyb.com/companies-working-on-5g-technology/ https://www.greyb.com/companies-working-on-5g-technology/
• sigmar 7y ago
  They note that Huawei's patent contained Quintel's name in the documents. How are those accusations weak? Seems like impressively strong evidence. Between T-mobile's tappy (resulted in indictment), Quintel's antennas, CNEX Labs, Tekelec Inc, motorola, cisco source, and Akhan Semiconductor's Diamond Glass[1](unmentioned in this piece) seems like there is quite a bit of evidence that Huawei has a company wide directive to steal IP. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-04/huawei-sting-offers-rare-glimpse-of-u-s-targeting-chinese-giant https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-04/huawei-st...
  • wyxuan 7y ago
    I talked to a senior Huawei exec and he said that tappy is not a good example of IP theft. The tester literally attempted to walk out with the machine. You can't get any more sloppy then that. Instead he said that the worker was really pressured by his bosses into delivering results. That's not to say that there are broader problems with IP theft at Huawei though.
    • gabaix 7y ago
      Trying to confirm your point: because the company was careless in letting an employee walk out, this was a lesser theft? I haven’t heard a case where a burglar gets a reduced sentence because the house was left unlocked. The fact that this comes from a Huawei senior exec speaks a lot about their company culture.
  • snowwindwaves 7y ago
    Don't forget nortel who used to employ 140,000 people including myself. Now the goverment occupies their offices. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-nortel-exec-warns-against-working-with-huawei-1.1137006 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-nortel-exec-warns-ag...
  • agent00f 7y ago
    Huawei is a massive org which does tons of technical work, and beyond a handful of things it's already down to ring tones, which only shows how desperate the accusers are. You might as accuse Google of ip theft due to that Oracle/Java thing. Or Americans of it since I'm sure it's happening at some level, eg Uber from waymo lawsuit.
• me_again 7y ago
  Your comment seems so disconnected from the actual article that it's hard not to see it as astroturfing.
• ineedasername 7y ago
  It seems like you went in with preconceived notions about the subject. Either way you chose maybe the least relevant example of Huawei's activities in your straw man construction of a counter argument to the article. The first two paragraphs alone detail attempts at massive exfiltration of proprietary information that dwarfs issues of a camera-phone patent. If Huawei's crime is cheaper products, it got there on the back of millions upon millions of dollars worth of R&D costs it was able to circumvent by theft of IP. Even were I to grant your claim that "any big tech company" does this (they don't-- see multi-billion dollar IP licensing agreements as evidence that such theft is less common than you claim) but even if I granted that claim, it wouldn't make this a satisfactory state of affairs. Embezzlement is somewhat common as well, but criminals don't get a pass for that theft when they're caught as a result of ubiquity of the crime. Neither should Huawei.
  • agent00f 7y ago
    > It seems like you went in with preconceived notions about the subject. This rather seems more applicable to the wsj and you. The op points out how weak some of these claims are, which is a sign that the wsj is desperately throwing everything at the wall and hope something sticks. This figures given they're a largely conservative pub prone to supporting the gop/Trump econ policy, which I might add a disturbing proportion of techies are sympathetic towards. What's particularly revealing about this issue is how many parrot the "stealing" talking point while at same time going on in the past about how software shouldn't be patented etc. Basically it shows they want to be able to use the ideas of others but not vice versa when they're getting beat, typical hypocrisy.
    • hatboat 7y ago
      Your last paragraph makes little sense. You can advocate for a world where software shouldn't be patented, while still respecting existing IP laws. Thinking everyone should play by the same rules, even if you disagree with those rules, is not hypocritical in the slightest.
    • ineedasername 7y ago
      The OP literally picked the most shallow of the IP theft claims, and nothing else, to critique the article. That is not pointing out how weak the article is, that is setting up a straw man of the article's claims in order to knock it down. There's also no need to risk derailing a discussion of the merits of the article by inserting opinions about presidential politics. The proportion of techies supporting Trump is irrelevant to the more narrow question of whether or not Huawei has stolen IP, and if the potential theft is what has facilitated their leap in front of competition. And yes, I did go into the article with preconceived notions because I was already very much aware of the details of their activities over the years. The OP chose to gloss over nearly every piece of content in favor of an emotional argument that people don't like Huawei because they are successful. So let's boil this down: the OP chose the weakest example, and an emotional argument. I provided a more detailed counter argument. Your response is also an emotional one, that you don't like that people sharing my point of view tend to support Trump. Again, these do not comprise a cogent contribution to a discussion on the merits of the article. And since you brought it up, I am heavily liberal in outlook, dislike nearly all Trump policy, and dislike the current state of IP law. That doesn't preclude me from believing Huawei acted improperly. There's nothing hypocritical is saying, "I don't like the current law, I think it should be changed. But it is the law, and breaking it is still more damaging to society and the rule of law than respecting it and pushing for change."
• kerng 7y ago
  Curious, did you actually read the article? The first paragraph alone notes much more significant issues. Later the article highlights things like Huawei stealing Cisco code, including all their bugs. I'm all for being critical and trying to stay objective as much as possible, but bluntly ignoring some of these issues won't help either.