China Defends Its IP Practices, Says 'We Paid Up' 214
hackingbear writes "Countering accusations that China's high-speed rail technologies are knockoffs, the head of China's Intellectual Property Administration in a conference said (paraphrasing): "We bought technologies from German, Japan, France, and Canada. We paid up. It is perfectly legal. We then innovate on top of them like most other inventions in the world. Why is that pirating?' (Link is to a Google translation; here is the original.) He cited China's ability, the world's first, to build high-speed rail in a high mountain area as an example of additional innovation."
Re:Human Translated Links and More POVs (Score:3, Insightful)
It sounds like there's going to be lengthy lawsuits lasting a decade or more and that the companies have reason to sue -- good reason.
They aren't going to collect. China is a sovereign nation and can as a result do whatever it wants. That trumps justice in this age.
No surprise. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you "own" intellectual property (Score:5, Insightful)
you own the means of production in a limited and short term fashion. pretty soon, your claim and your basis for ownership evaporate
if you own the factory, you actually own the means of production, and therefore you actually are in power
the usa has moved all of its production to china, retaining the intellectual property "keys". these keys will rapidly become useless and unenforceable, and all the purple faced tirades about piracy will be met with a shrug. and the usa will find itself locked out of those factories, and without power
the pursuit of profit has resulted in a very short sighted situation where all the means of production are being moved to an autocracy that does not share our values. it will take a number of years, but this will not end well. and it is all because the captains of industry want fractionally higher stock market returns, and joe six pack wants more cheap plastic crap at walmart. for these empty goals, the common man and the man in power in the usa are selling their country's soul
Re:Standing on the Shoulders of Giants (Score:4, Insightful)
That is the Chinese innovation that I know.
Re:high speed tail? (Score:5, Insightful)
ANY girl in a remote area is desperate.
No need to visit China - just to Appalachia (like west virginia).
Re:Innovation? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure China has done just as much innovation on those rails as the Soviets did with the Tu-4 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-4)
We could also cite how USA and Russia innovated rocket technology, thanks to the Germans. I am not saying this is any better or worse, what I am saying is that if you comb through history then you will probably see many more cases of technology ending up in other countries without some sort of 'due' being paid. While it is only fair to compensate the original inventor or innovator, there are limits to doing so.
Re:Human Translated Links and More POVs (Score:4, Insightful)
It sounds like there's going to be lengthy lawsuits lasting a decade or more and that the companies have reason to sue -- good reason.
They aren't going to collect. China is a sovereign nation and can as a result do whatever it wants. That trumps justice in this age.
You're right unless you upset another nation's technology on such a level that you jeopardize your status in some special group [wikipedia.org] that gives you benefits with other nations. Also consider this fact (outlined in the above NPR interview): Siemens of Germany, Alstom of France, Bombardier of Canada and Kawasaki of Japan exported technology to China in order to ensure that third world peoples in Asia could benefit from it [wikipedia.org]. Now, they did make money off of that export but those same companies are now are staring down Chinese competition everywhere in the world from Russia to Brazil to the United States! How are they going to compete with lax Chinese labor and pollution? I don't know what the license contracts read but I highly doubt these companies signed away complete rights to their bread and butter for a few hundred million.
Let me ask you this: if China sends the above companies a big "F U" in response to their desire for justice, what are the chances that any more technology transfer is going to be allowed into China by anybody when four years after you are competing with your own technology plus Chinese improvements? Being a sovereign nation is fine and dandy but if China wants any part in maintaining their image as a just sovereign nation, then they better see this court case through.
Re:If you "own" intellectual property (Score:2, Insightful)
On the other hand, without outsourcing production and the resulting enormous price-drops, the equally enormous developments in all kinds of areas, like smartphones, probably wouldn't have happened.
Re:If you "own" intellectual property (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but while I agree with you, this is actually old news. This has been a chief complaint of many Japanese and other nations who have shifted their manufacturing to China and neighboring countries.
Your "predictions" are actually already happening and has been happening for quite some time. Quite often, it would be a factory "owned" by another nation's company and is shut down and seized by the Chinese government who "never actually gave up their rights to ownership."
Re:Human Translated Links and More POVs (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, calling China a "tin-pot dictatorship" is silly. A tin-pot dictator is one who, despite delusions of grandeur, is ultimately of little significance to the world at large. However you might choose to characterize China, "of little significance to the world at large" it is not.
Re:Human Translated Links and More POVs (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a question, if "four years later you are competing with your own technology plus Chinese improvements", then why haven't you improved it yourself just as well or better? If during those four years, the Chinese improvements are so advanced that you can't compete, then it's your own fault, not "lax Chinese labor and pollution".
Okay with this sort of logic, you're not going to see any company willing to invest into R&D more than four years of return from that innovation.
It's fine if you want to draw the line at four years or four decades or four days, I don't care. But you have to realize that this will severely affect R&D if it's your own fault that you failed to improve past what you just innovated. Justifying someone using your patents to directly compete with you is only unfair when you were granted those patents assuming a longer time to recoup the money you invested into those patents.
I'm not arguing for or against patents and I'm not arguing to lengthen or shorten the time they are in effect. What I'm trying to do is get you to understand the repercussions of doing any of the above.
Corruption, lax pollution laws and questionable labor practices make China very difficult to compete with. We've exported so much manufacturing there because of this. Is it a bad thing? Only when you're a company that's facing brutal competition because you engaged in "technology transfer." If you're telling those companies it's "their fault" for not out-innovating the Chinese, I would argue that the Chinese could pay someone 1/10 to manufacture the technology and bribe a local official to ignore that excess acidic precipitate from the mine making the rail and come out underbidding you on any contract the world over. Regardless of whether they improved on your design or not.
In my opinion, pure unbridled capitalism is a very devastating force and responsible IP laws are a good thing. IP infringement is Chinese culture [slashdot.org]. They play by their rules and if you're not prepared for it, do not engage in business with them.
Good for them (Score:3, Insightful)
The Chinese built the American rail system, it's only fitting they now build their own. I for one applaud them.
well (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html [thirdworldtraveler.com]
Re:Human Translated Links and More POVs (Score:3, Insightful)
This age? I missed that time the Senate of Rome and the Council of Carthage got together in a court preceeding overseen by the Parthians to solve their land dispute over territory that is now called Spain. Oh right, b/c that never happened, in every age force will trump justice.
Re:Human Translated Links and More POVs (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and I forgot:
3.China's population density is many times that in the USA. Most people in China live in the strip of land along the coastline and there are 1,600,000,000 of them. The subway in Beijing for example runs 6 car trains every 2 minutes during rush hour and it is standing room only. The light rail here in Denver is a 3 car train every 15 minutes and you can usually sit. (yes, I've ridden both) One of these public transportation systems pays its own way on ticket sales and one of them is HEAVILY subsidized by taxpayers. Your guess which one is a sensible public mass transit system and which one exists mainly to make people feel good about some abstract idealized notion of public transportation.
Re:Human Translated Links and More POVs (Score:3, Insightful)
I only said 'four years' because that is what you said. The point I was making is just as someone else mentioned, if the companies didn't license their patents with a "Do Not Compete" clause then they cannot complain when the Chinese come back and compete against them. If they've innovated during those four/ten/fifteen years, then why haven't you? It doesn't matter what you assume, if you license your patents to someone, you can expect them to compete against you. If it wasn't a long enough time period then either you underestimated how long it would take them to bring it to market or underestimated how long it would take to recoup your money.
Also, R&D should be continuous. You do your R&D until you have something to bring to market, while that gets put into production and is rolled out, you continue to do R&D to continue to innovate past what you've just come up with. If you don't continue to do R&D then don't complain when someone else improves upon what you've come up with before you do.
It's common knowledge that you can pay someone in China 1/10 of the cost of someone in most anywhere else. You factor this into your decision making. Essentially, as you said, "they play by their rules and if you're not prepared for it, do not engage in business with them" is the point. There is no reason for any of these companies to be complaining because 1) nothing 'illegal' happened here as the Chinese paid for the patents, 2) the companies knew or should have known what they were getting into and dealing with as it is all common knowledge, especially for a business.
Also, you would have to define what you mean by 'responsible IP laws' before I could agree with you that they are a good thing. Though I do agree that pure unbridled capitalism is very devastating.
Re:Not us! (Score:5, Insightful)
I've noticed a tendency of most people to define ethics in a way that gives their own group an edge, and using that standard to measure everyone else's behavior. For example, black people 'steal' at a higher rate than white people, but white people actually steal vastly more wealth, they just do it through white collar tricks that they don't consider stealing. For example, they get money for R&D that never pans out, and which they could have known from the outset would never pan out, but they didn't ask the relevant questions because they didn't want to endanger the flow of money. Then they pretend that's just how R&D is. Or, the let their money "work for them" in the stock market, and pretend that they deserve high returns because their money is making the economy more efficient. They ignore the dynamics where they're getting richer because someone else in a less advantageous position is seeing their savings evaporate through inflationary effects that they can't protect themselves against.
So yes, Chinese people are dishonest, and have some other traits that are even worse, as well as virtues that compare favorably to Europeans. But in the graduate school I went to, all the Americans except myself were cheating, and professionally most of the Americans I've worked with have effectively been stealing. So I'm tired of hearing how corrupt other peoples are when our own culture is destroying itself. We are the reason our economy has been going down the shithole, its not the immigrants.
Re:Human Translated Links and More POVs (Score:3, Insightful)
What China is encouraging is businesses to no longer patent certain processes and methods, instead opting for the trade-secret route. While the /. population in general probably feels less patents are good, it isn't. Instead of teaching the world about flim-flams and boffin-tubes, Alstrom and Siemens will lock up their technology inside a vault as "Trade Secrets", jealously guard it from outsiders and even insiders who don't need to know. Innovations stumbles and we all suffer as a whole.
I don't buy it. There's two things to consider here. First, if the technology gets used, then it can be reverse engineered. And if valuable technology is locked up and not used, then it provides a huge incentive to the people who developed the technology to leave the business for one that will develop the technology. This sort of environment favors companies which can quickly turn a concept into product.
Re:No surprise. (Score:1, Insightful)
When the deal regarding the Transrapid was announced in Germany most people didn't take notice that the deal involved China wanting to eventually build the trains themselves which of course means licensing the technology and transferring a lot of know-how.
The problem with the Transrapid is that it can't really be sold in countries with well-developed rail system, since conventional high speed trains like TGV or ICE provide a slight less speed/ more noise at a fraction of the costs.
Since most advanced countries with high population density have a well developed rail system. So it's actually impossible to sell besides precisely an advancing economy like China. So the only choice was to scrap the whole thing and let billions of tax payer german marks/ euros evaporate.... There wasn't really much choice there.
Oh, don't say US, the tracks are very expensive, so covering distances needed for the US would beyond anyones means.
Re:Human Translated Links and More POVs (Score:2, Insightful)
To be fair usually it's "software patents are evil"
As far as patents being evil. They aren't inherently evil. Just that what is allowed to be patentable, is way more than the set of useful inventions. It may be to the point where the only way to make them actually promote ideas is, where we throw them all out because of abuses, and start with a much stricter set of rules. (Yes, that sucks for some people/companies)
Re:Not us! (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh, wait, so shoplifting is morally equivalent to buying a portfolio of voting rights in productive enterprises (that those enterprises knowingly issued for that purpose) and to failing to speak up soon enough about your negative estimate of R&D success?
No. Just ... just, no. That is about fifty different kinds of wrong.
Re:Human Translated Links and More POVs (Score:3, Insightful)
the issue is that "China" bought the patents, not "Chinese companies". Sure a company bought them, but the GOVERNMENT passes out the manufacturing where needed, meaning those engineers get a big pile of patents from all the companies at once!! That's something impossible to get in First World. In the first world, to build something like the train, it would take a hundred contractors bickering with each other, to get half the results. Each company would petition the government to use it's proprietary motor, gears, tracks, etc, etc so the finished system is a poorly constructed mash of a bunch of stuff companies grudgingly allowed to work together.
In China they skim the best of the patents (and they manufacture all this for the first world anyway so they know the cost/benefits better than anyone) and build THAT. In the next decade they're going to get SO far ahead of everyone else it will be silly.