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Do these companies ever actually innovate and build social/intellectual capital beyond reverse engineering skills or are they gaming to pollute the waters so mu

Do these companies ever actually innovate and build social/intellectual capital beyond reverse engineering skills or are they gaming to pollute the waters so much that they risk sacrificing the golden goose to whom they steal ideas? This all sort of reminds me of the quip communism or socialism only works until those in charge spend all the money of those who are productive. If IP and the R&D expenses never become profitable and companies go under what then?

barry-cotter 7y ago
> Do these companies ever actually innovate and build social/intellectual capital beyond reverse engineering skills Yes. See the industrial history of the US, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and everywhere else that ignored patents and trade secrets for more details. Cisco would be highly profitable if it could only sell to the US market and if you’re the market leader your stuff is just better for years to minimum, a year. People want the best, they want quality, so they pay a premium for it. That’s why brands exist, otherwise people would have to do their own quality control for each individual thing they bought.
pravda 7y ago
Well, in the USA, American industry got its start by stealing British technology. At this point, China copying foreign technology is just the path of least resistance. Eventually, China will be doing the innovating.
- spectramax 7y ago
  I really despise this kind of reasoning. You’re literally comparing 200 year old history and justifying modern IP theft, and projecting forward.
  - pravda 7y ago
    I am not justifying, just describing. As far as the other issue goes, Chinese not being creative due to [insert reason here], I think that is just silly. I am sure the British said, "those dumb Yanks, they can only copy, can't create anything."
  - deroisas2y 7y ago
    In the 80s, Japan stole American IP, and now innovates. 30 years ago. In the 90s, Korea stole Japanese IP, and now innovates. 20 years ago.
  - matz1 7y ago
    Stealing works. If the benefit > risk, they should do it.
    - spectramax 7y ago
      What an insane argument. Murder, Theft, Deceit, Assault, Terrorism “works” as well. Being a crow in the population of doves has short term benefits to the individual, the crow in this case, but soon more crows will pop up and the societal balance turns into chaos. I’m sure we need not argue this obvious fact. Are you really condoning that stealing OK if it works? I’m speechless.
      - matz1 7y ago
        >Murder, Theft, Deceit, Assault, Terrorism “works”. Depending on the context, yes. Murder, for example, if I'm in a remote island and someone is going to kill me and they are weaker than me, then yes murdering them first works, the benefit > risk. Likewise,in the context of Huawei, stealing works. Note that I'm not saying the US shouldn't do anything to prevent/retaliate.
- yarg 7y ago
  The assumption there that the capacity for creativity in China comparable to that in the west. I wonder firstly about the extent to which creativity can exist to a societally significant extent under an increasingly authoritarian government. I also wonder about the extent to which the Chinese creative class was purged in the cultural revolution, and what impact that may have had on the societal capacity for creativity. Without deeper investigation, I don't think it's reasonable to conclude that modern China has (or does not have) a capacity for creativity that will allow them to outpace a genuinely liberal and freely educated society.
  - riffraff 7y ago
    Let's say China has 20 times less creativity than the west. This means still more creativity than most western countries because of their size.
    - wolco 7y ago
      Society may not support that creativity in terms of production output while in the west you have creative multipliers.
    - yarg 7y ago
      That's really not how statistics works though. Imagine a pair of overlapping normal distributions (https://www.google.com/search?q=overlapping+normal+distributions https://www.google.com/search?q=overlapping+normal+distribut...), the ratio between the two is far from fixed, and the further of centre you go, the greater the discrepancy. My suspicion is that an authoritarian regime is likely to offset the centre of the creativity distribution. But that's not the full extent of what I suspect of the Chinese population's distribution in terms of creativity. My thoughts are that it's more likely to be a partially truncated normal distribution, with a rapid and significant drop off at the high end of the creativity spectrum. This is all pure conjecture, but if either possibility is true it would be significantly restricting to Chinese creativity, and if both are true it would be devastating (especially in terms of their ability to compete).
      - 7y ago
cherioo 7y ago
Yes. One of which is the innovation they had done recently in 5G, where China scored 34% of essential patent [1]. Except, we all know what US decides to do when another superpower is threatening it. Technology are always developed this way: learn (sometimes not so nicely), catch up, and then innovate. An random country can't innovate itself to a 5G/technology super power immediately. What I never get from this accusations is, why aren't these company suing to ban Huawei sales if the copying is so blatant. Have they not heard of the patent system? Is Cisco/Nortel suddenly a small company that cannot afford to sue and/or have a vast arsenel of patents? [1] https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/02/china-dusts-the-u-s-finland-and-south-korea-with-34-of-key-5g-patents/ https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/02/china-dusts-the-u-s-finla...
- tooltalk 7y ago
  > why aren't these company suing to ban Huawei sales if the copying is so blatant. ... First, Huawei's sales in the US already is quite limited to have any impact. Second, you can't win any sales or import injunction on 5G SEP violation.

barry-cotter 7y ago

> Do these companies ever actually innovate and build social/intellectual capital beyond reverse engineering skills Yes. See the industrial history of the US, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and everywhere else that ignored patents and trade secrets for more details. Cisco would be highly profitable if it could only sell to the US market and if you’re the market leader your stuff is just better for years to minimum, a year. People want the best, they want quality, so they pay a premium for it. That’s why brands exist, otherwise people would have to do their own quality control for each individual thing they bought.

pravda 7y ago

Well, in the USA, American industry got its start by stealing British technology. At this point, China copying foreign technology is just the path of least resistance. Eventually, China will be doing the innovating.

spectramax 7y ago
I really despise this kind of reasoning. You’re literally comparing 200 year old history and justifying modern IP theft, and projecting forward.
- pravda 7y ago
  I am not justifying, just describing. As far as the other issue goes, Chinese not being creative due to [insert reason here], I think that is just silly. I am sure the British said, "those dumb Yanks, they can only copy, can't create anything."
- deroisas2y 7y ago
  In the 80s, Japan stole American IP, and now innovates. 30 years ago. In the 90s, Korea stole Japanese IP, and now innovates. 20 years ago.
- matz1 7y ago
  Stealing works. If the benefit > risk, they should do it.
  - spectramax 7y ago
    What an insane argument. Murder, Theft, Deceit, Assault, Terrorism “works” as well. Being a crow in the population of doves has short term benefits to the individual, the crow in this case, but soon more crows will pop up and the societal balance turns into chaos. I’m sure we need not argue this obvious fact. Are you really condoning that stealing OK if it works? I’m speechless.
    - matz1 7y ago
      >Murder, Theft, Deceit, Assault, Terrorism “works”. Depending on the context, yes. Murder, for example, if I'm in a remote island and someone is going to kill me and they are weaker than me, then yes murdering them first works, the benefit > risk. Likewise,in the context of Huawei, stealing works. Note that I'm not saying the US shouldn't do anything to prevent/retaliate.
yarg 7y ago
The assumption there that the capacity for creativity in China comparable to that in the west. I wonder firstly about the extent to which creativity can exist to a societally significant extent under an increasingly authoritarian government. I also wonder about the extent to which the Chinese creative class was purged in the cultural revolution, and what impact that may have had on the societal capacity for creativity. Without deeper investigation, I don't think it's reasonable to conclude that modern China has (or does not have) a capacity for creativity that will allow them to outpace a genuinely liberal and freely educated society.
- riffraff 7y ago
  Let's say China has 20 times less creativity than the west. This means still more creativity than most western countries because of their size.
  - wolco 7y ago
    Society may not support that creativity in terms of production output while in the west you have creative multipliers.
  - yarg 7y ago
    That's really not how statistics works though. Imagine a pair of overlapping normal distributions (https://www.google.com/search?q=overlapping+normal+distributions https://www.google.com/search?q=overlapping+normal+distribut...), the ratio between the two is far from fixed, and the further of centre you go, the greater the discrepancy. My suspicion is that an authoritarian regime is likely to offset the centre of the creativity distribution. But that's not the full extent of what I suspect of the Chinese population's distribution in terms of creativity. My thoughts are that it's more likely to be a partially truncated normal distribution, with a rapid and significant drop off at the high end of the creativity spectrum. This is all pure conjecture, but if either possibility is true it would be significantly restricting to Chinese creativity, and if both are true it would be devastating (especially in terms of their ability to compete).
    - 7y ago

cherioo 7y ago

Yes. One of which is the innovation they had done recently in 5G, where China scored 34% of essential patent [1]. Except, we all know what US decides to do when another superpower is threatening it. Technology are always developed this way: learn (sometimes not so nicely), catch up, and then innovate. An random country can't innovate itself to a 5G/technology super power immediately. What I never get from this accusations is, why aren't these company suing to ban Huawei sales if the copying is so blatant. Have they not heard of the patent system? Is Cisco/Nortel suddenly a small company that cannot afford to sue and/or have a vast arsenel of patents? [1] https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/02/china-dusts-the-u-s-finland-and-south-korea-with-34-of-key-5g-patents/ https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/02/china-dusts-the-u-s-finla...

tooltalk 7y ago
> why aren't these company suing to ban Huawei sales if the copying is so blatant. ... First, Huawei's sales in the US already is quite limited to have any impact. Second, you can't win any sales or import injunction on 5G SEP violation.