China Law Blog - China's Lack Of IP Protection: Overrated. Overrated. - Comments

Anonymous

Dan — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:28:08 -0800

The Chinese Government Steals Western Intellectual Property

"Google engineers at Silicon Valley began to suspect that Chinese intruders were breaking into private Gmail accounts, the company began a secret counteroffensive."

It appears "Adobe Systems, Northrop Grummanand Juniper Networks, Microsoft,Rolls-Royce and Royal Dutch Shell,Dow Chemical, Yahoo, Symantec,
Rackspace Hosting Inc, Cybersitter",
and God knows who, in a considered deliberate attack on Western intellectual property by the heathen Communist Chinese.

The practice of stealing is built into the business model at Baidu.com" the Chinese Internet company carved out a strong presence by offering something that Google, at first, would not:easy links to download pirated songs, TV shows and movies."

The Communist heathens need a class action lawsuit handed to them for gaining access to everyone, who has ever owned a gmail/hotmail account.Is there a lawyer in the US worth their salt anymore?

Andrew Li

Dan — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:28:08 -0800

On the present US companies are selling less and less products than IP to China market. To protect the interests and right of IP owners, US company should select reliable PRC partners who are licensed to manufacture the product with US IP, by reviewing the partners' credit records, history,experiences and lawsuits. Carefully drafted contracts with PRC partners are of great importance.

Jay

Dan — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:28:08 -0800

IP theft was a huge problem for most of my foreign clients in China. Many of them came to us only after it was too late to help them. They tried to do business on the cheap in China and often ignored the theft of their technology or were forced into giving it away in return for market access. Many ended up losing their other non-US markets to the Chinese companies that took their IP and started exporting it at lower cost.

luckylulu

Dan — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:28:08 -0800

Great post. After researching the phenomena of "Shanzhai" in China - I have realized just how important IP is and how vital it is to understand the link between IP and innovation.
More later...

outcast

Dan — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:28:08 -0800

@Dan:

I definitely agree with your point about some foreign companies products pricing themselves out of the market, and the two finest examples of this I could think of are the iPhone and Windows. The 8GB iPhone costs about 5000 yuan and a legit version of Windows XP Pro retail used to cost 2000 yuan (I don't know what it is now that Vista and 7 have come out), far beyond what most people were capable of paying for them.

Windows is actually a peculiar case because if it wasn't for widespread piracy, Linux would rule the desktop in China instead of Micro$oft.

Nils Montan

Dan — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:28:08 -0800

Good points in this post. Yes, we should try to do business in China, but it's clear to many businesses outside the country that the basic lack of respect for intellectual property rights is a big problem. I believe that fully 75-80% of the counterfeit products sold all over the world come from China. It's really hard to have a warm and fuzzy feeling for a place with that kind of record.