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> China is also building a huge war chest of IP patents. My understanding is that China doesn’t care about abusing patents they don’t own. Is this incorrect? D
by dgfitz 1y ago
> China is also building a huge war chest of IP patents.
My understanding is that China doesn’t care about abusing patents they don’t own. Is this incorrect? Do they value patents only when they hold them and enforce them?
Asking sincerely.
- Propelloni 1y agoWhatever China does is what China does. The point is, Europe and the USA care, and patents have leverage in nations under the rule of law.
- hsuduebc2 1y agoWell they usually just ignoring the patents and just copying it. The problem is when state actor, potentially, can fund applications for patents and act as a bad actor in the future. Application costs tens thousands of dollars. I actually came across this a few days ago here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44911423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44911423. Prusa, the creator of 3D printers, mentioned that Chinese companies are filing patents on parts he and his team originally released as open source. Just another clear example of how, for some reason, we in the West keep tolerating if not indirectly supporting this kind of behavior.
- FpUser 1y ago>" Just another clear example of how, for some reason, we in the West keep tolerating if not indirectly supporting this kind of behavior." Live by the sword, die by the sword. It is the West that first turned patents into the weapon for big corps to fuck the rest of the world. Well now they're tasting it themselves
- hsuduebc2 1y agoCan't really argue with that. I basically expect similar behavior to patent trolls in Europe and the US. And because of the Western sense of untouchability and the illusion of their own importance, they’ll allow themselves to be at least partially paralyzed by a flood of lawsuits. This isn’t about protecting knowhow or actually producing anything, but about generating as much legal and financial friction as possible. The difference is that in China it can be semi-state-backed or at least tolerated, so it’s not just a bizarre parasitic business model like in the West but also a geopolitical tactic.
- FpUser 1y agoNo matter the Country, all IP laws and practices are backed by government, otherwise how they can be enforced.
- linkregister 1y agoThe monolithic West, comprised of only bad actors, none good. Even the previous poster's example of the open source parts is invalid because the organization was part of the West.
- overfeed 1y agoObviously gp forgot that open source projects fall under the ambit of open source law, witten by open source legislators and adjudicated by open source court circuits /s The "west" absolutely has a monolithic IP jurisprudence, rules codified by trade agreements and passed laws[1]. This has harmed open source in the past, such as the multi-decade, recurring issue where folk have the license to make use of the source code, but not the associated trademarks. 1. As evidence, I offer the great mobile patent wars of the 2010's, which played out similarly across multiple countries the suits were filed, except the home-countries where the scales were the scales were thumbed.
- est 1y ago> Chinese companies are filing patents on parts he and his team originally released as open source They didn't intentionally or exclusively targeting open source, the "# of patents" are very explicit KPI requirement for tech companies in China. Every team gotta grind patents as much as they can.
- andersa 1y agoThey don't use those patents internally, they discovered they can block progress in the west by spamming patents on absolutely everything and thus made it one of their strategies. The goal is to grind our industry to a halt and it's starting to work.
- MangoToupe 1y agoWhy even bother? We're our own greatest enemy.
- XorNot 1y agoIn an adversarial conflict the goal isn't for it to be a fair fight.
- MangoToupe 1y agoI'm not sure there is an adversarial conflict for most of us.