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Have we as global consumers just accepted that the Chinese don’t have to respect the system of copyright or patent in any capacity at all? It seems like we’re c

Have we as global consumers just accepted that the Chinese don’t have to respect the system of copyright or patent in any capacity at all? It seems like we’re converging on a point where nearly any novel invention or concept will be quickly stolen by the Chinese, repackaged, and sold in the global marketplace for a fraction of the price.

AlexandrB 5y ago
It's hard to have respect for the copyright/patent system we've constructed in the west when it's frequently abused and often favours large industry players over "little guys". There are some advantages to the wild-west remix culture you see happening with Chinese goods. There are also plenty of inventions that are so trivial/obvious that they should not have had patent protection in the first place[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click
com2kid 5y ago
Working at Microsoft, I was not allowed to even read patents incase I accidently infringed on one, which would become willful infringement since I had read the patent. So, that means no learning from what others had done, which is the entire idea of publicly posted patents vs trade secrets. The patent system is literally causing the opposite of innovation to happen in certain technology spaces.
bsder 5y ago
> Have we as global consumers just accepted that the Chinese don’t have to respect the system of copyright or patent in any capacity at all? Even if these were prosecuted, would it really help in electronics, for example? Since everybody has access to the same chips and creating a PCB is cheap and relatively quick, what would you even prosecute? Sure, you could prosecute the exact clones, but, most people are just following the manufacturer reference designs from the datasheet so there's nothing stopping someone else from doing that. The problem is that once you prove there is a market for a piece of electronics, somebody in China will now pick off that market for cheaper. Is this not capitalism at its most raw? The problem that this causes in electronics is that this trashes scaling as well as customer support. You can sell a $100 thingit, create a reddit community, and mostly tell people they're on their own with the occasional answer from somebody semi-official. Or you can sell a $10K+ thingit and actually provide excellent customer support. In both cases, you will get cloned and ripped off--which limits the amount of money you can get from the market. The current "solution" is to always have a cloud component which can't be cloned. This is, of course, anathema to open source, but I haven't seen anybody in open source have a good answer for this, either.

AlexandrB 5y ago

It's hard to have respect for the copyright/patent system we've constructed in the west when it's frequently abused and often favours large industry players over "little guys". There are some advantages to the wild-west remix culture you see happening with Chinese goods. There are also plenty of inventions that are so trivial/obvious that they should not have had patent protection in the first place[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click

com2kid 5y ago

Working at Microsoft, I was not allowed to even read patents incase I accidently infringed on one, which would become willful infringement since I had read the patent. So, that means no learning from what others had done, which is the entire idea of publicly posted patents vs trade secrets. The patent system is literally causing the opposite of innovation to happen in certain technology spaces.

bsder 5y ago

> Have we as global consumers just accepted that the Chinese don’t have to respect the system of copyright or patent in any capacity at all? Even if these were prosecuted, would it really help in electronics, for example? Since everybody has access to the same chips and creating a PCB is cheap and relatively quick, what would you even prosecute? Sure, you could prosecute the exact clones, but, most people are just following the manufacturer reference designs from the datasheet so there's nothing stopping someone else from doing that. The problem is that once you prove there is a market for a piece of electronics, somebody in China will now pick off that market for cheaper. Is this not capitalism at its most raw? The problem that this causes in electronics is that this trashes scaling as well as customer support. You can sell a $100 thingit, create a reddit community, and mostly tell people they're on their own with the occasional answer from somebody semi-official. Or you can sell a $10K+ thingit and actually provide excellent customer support. In both cases, you will get cloned and ripped off--which limits the amount of money you can get from the market. The current "solution" is to always have a cloud component which can't be cloned. This is, of course, anathema to open source, but I haven't seen anybody in open source have a good answer for this, either.