4 ms·

The US did the same thing until it didn't. Should everyone ignore US patents because we flouted everyone else's for a century?

product50 7y ago
Whose patents did US flout?
- shagie 7y ago
  https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/07/05/americas-industrial-revolution-based-trade-secret-theft/id=85377/ https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/07/05/americas-industrial-re... https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-industrial-espionage-started-americas-cotton-revolution-180967608/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-industrial-esp... https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/06/we-were-pirates-too/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/06/we-were-pirates-too/ (this one is specifically in context of China) This was before patents were well codified - instead it was trade secrets and guilds. It was still intellectual property theft.
  - learc83 7y ago
    Slater was a British citizen who was prohibited by law from leaving Britain. He left under an assumed identity and set up shop in the US. This is not an example of the US engaging in industrial espionage or IP theft itself. We don't even know if Slater himself committed what we would call IP theft. From your first article: >Looking back, we can’t really conclude whether Samuel Slater’s actions would have qualified as trade secret misappropriation under modern laws. We don’t know, for example, how much of his work that first year resulted from his skills and general knowledge about the physics of spinning cotton and about pre-existing mechanical techniques. All of that was his to use freely. And we don’t know to what extent the success of his mills was due to improvements that he came up with on his own. There was a deputy treasury secretary who posted bounties looking for British cotton mill operators, but that seemingly never came of anything. That is better evidence of direct wrongdoing by the US. However, the US hadn't signed any treaties honoring British IP law yet and most European powers were doing the exact same thing at the time. >While the first U.S. patent act, in 1790, specified that "any person or persons" could file a patent, it was changed in 1793 to make clear that only U.S. citizens could claim U.S. patent protection. >China’s modern trade and patent regimes are similarly tilted against outsiders. The US in 1793 hadn't signed a treaty preventing them from limiting patent protection to US citizens. China has signed treaties promising to treat patent applications by petitioners from signatory states the same as domestic petitioners, and as your article points out they do not.
learc83 7y ago
What century was this? The US didn't sign a comprehensive patent treaty until near the end of the 19th century, so we were under no moral or legal obligation to honor another countries internal patents before then. The US also kept people in slavery for close to a century--I don't think that's a good excuse for a modern developing nation to practice slavery.
- fspeech 7y ago
  No one has any obligation to honor another country's "internal patents". Patents are only enforceable in the countries that grant them. US patents are granted by the US government. To ignore them in the US is to violate US laws, not Chinese laws. Patents granted by the Chinese government have no legal force in the US in the first place.
  - learc83 7y ago
    That's was probably the wrong way to word it because yes foreign patents aren't enforced by the US. The Paris treaty I was referring to regulates why a patent can be denied. For instance its says that the US has to treat patent applications from citizens of member countries the same as US petitioners. For example, the US can't show favoritism to domestic companies (with respect to other countries who've signed the treaty) when granting patents--they can't just deny patent protections to Chinese petitioners because they are Chinese. (I'm guessing there are nation security exceptions, but I'm not an expert, I've just researched this from a business perspective.) And the US has to honor the priority date of foreign signatories patents (assuming certain conditions are met).
  - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    I don't know the specifics, but presumably this is what a patent treaty is designed to cope with?

product50 7y ago

Whose patents did US flout?

shagie 7y ago
https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/07/05/americas-industrial-revolution-based-trade-secret-theft/id=85377/ https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/07/05/americas-industrial-re... https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-industrial-espionage-started-americas-cotton-revolution-180967608/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-industrial-esp... https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/06/we-were-pirates-too/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/06/we-were-pirates-too/ (this one is specifically in context of China) This was before patents were well codified - instead it was trade secrets and guilds. It was still intellectual property theft.
- learc83 7y ago
  Slater was a British citizen who was prohibited by law from leaving Britain. He left under an assumed identity and set up shop in the US. This is not an example of the US engaging in industrial espionage or IP theft itself. We don't even know if Slater himself committed what we would call IP theft. From your first article: >Looking back, we can’t really conclude whether Samuel Slater’s actions would have qualified as trade secret misappropriation under modern laws. We don’t know, for example, how much of his work that first year resulted from his skills and general knowledge about the physics of spinning cotton and about pre-existing mechanical techniques. All of that was his to use freely. And we don’t know to what extent the success of his mills was due to improvements that he came up with on his own. There was a deputy treasury secretary who posted bounties looking for British cotton mill operators, but that seemingly never came of anything. That is better evidence of direct wrongdoing by the US. However, the US hadn't signed any treaties honoring British IP law yet and most European powers were doing the exact same thing at the time. >While the first U.S. patent act, in 1790, specified that "any person or persons" could file a patent, it was changed in 1793 to make clear that only U.S. citizens could claim U.S. patent protection. >China’s modern trade and patent regimes are similarly tilted against outsiders. The US in 1793 hadn't signed a treaty preventing them from limiting patent protection to US citizens. China has signed treaties promising to treat patent applications by petitioners from signatory states the same as domestic petitioners, and as your article points out they do not.

learc83 7y ago

What century was this? The US didn't sign a comprehensive patent treaty until near the end of the 19th century, so we were under no moral or legal obligation to honor another countries internal patents before then. The US also kept people in slavery for close to a century--I don't think that's a good excuse for a modern developing nation to practice slavery.

fspeech 7y ago
No one has any obligation to honor another country's "internal patents". Patents are only enforceable in the countries that grant them. US patents are granted by the US government. To ignore them in the US is to violate US laws, not Chinese laws. Patents granted by the Chinese government have no legal force in the US in the first place.
- learc83 7y ago
  That's was probably the wrong way to word it because yes foreign patents aren't enforced by the US. The Paris treaty I was referring to regulates why a patent can be denied. For instance its says that the US has to treat patent applications from citizens of member countries the same as US petitioners. For example, the US can't show favoritism to domestic companies (with respect to other countries who've signed the treaty) when granting patents--they can't just deny patent protections to Chinese petitioners because they are Chinese. (I'm guessing there are nation security exceptions, but I'm not an expert, I've just researched this from a business perspective.) And the US has to honor the priority date of foreign signatories patents (assuming certain conditions are met).
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  I don't know the specifics, but presumably this is what a patent treaty is designed to cope with?