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."
Innovation? (Score:2, Interesting)
Not us! (Score:5, Interesting)
I knew a fellow that was an engineer working for Siemens in China on HSR and he had some wonderful stories about how their computers grew legs while working in China.
Apparently, from what I remember, the Siemens folks would return to work in the morning and all of the computer cables (monitor, keyboard, power, etc...) would be disconnected from the machines. Sometimes the computers would just pile into a group inside the office. They changed the locks to the office, locked down cpus, etc... but without fail the machines just moved on their own. Unable to get any useful response from their Chinese contacts they set up a camera and found it was the folks they were working on the project with who were taking the computers. When confronted with the evidence, the response was a merely 'Not Us!' And business continued as if none of this was happening.
Re:Human Translated Links and More POVs (Score:5, Interesting)
To continue this point, SOP with China especially, and Asia in general, is to surrender IP via technology transfer agreements and consulting agreements. This is bad philosophically, but necessary practically as a business can get something for teaching and training, or nothing at all. Either way, you will have your IP stolen so most shops have decided to get what they can while they can. This was all tolerable before, but now that China is competing in primary markets with effectively stolen technology lots of industries are getting pissed, not just train builders.
The whole point behind patents is to encourage innovation by granting an inventor time-limited monopolies on their ideas so long as they teach their invention to the world. Using trains as en example, Siemens figures out how to build a better flim-flam widget inside the boffin-tube to make the ding-dang wheel spin faster... which somehow improves the Train. By agreeing to tell the world how it all works, they are allowed to prevent others from selling this thing to the world for a two decades. The idea being, Alstom researchers can use that knowledge to make an even smaller flim-flam that leads to an even better train.
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" [wikimedia.org], jealously guard it from outsiders and even insiders who don't need to know. Innovations stumbles and we all suffer as a whole.
no (Score:4, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun#Slave_labor [wikipedia.org]
just like how you have employed ex gestapo as an anti-eastern bloc spy net during cold war, leading to the impeccable shit cia and similar organizations perpetrated, thanks to their influence in their ranks.
Re:If you "own" intellectual property (Score:3, Interesting)
We all want cheap things (or rather, things made more affordable) - that is how wealth is created.
Insisting that all things be produced by 'ourselves' (whether as a family, city, county, state or nation) make us poorer - think of all the things you are using now and think about how hard it would be for all of it to be made by yourself. Or your family. Or with just people in your town. Or with just people in your state.
Division of labour is what creates wealth.The borders of a city or state or country do not change this fundamental fact.
Re:Human Translated Links and More POVs (Score:3, Interesting)
The only reason the United States doesn't do more with mass transit including rail is the government is a sell out to to auto and airline industries.
More likely a combination of several other factors:
1. The central government in China just says 'build a rail line there' and construction starts next month. In the USA it would take five years of environmental impact studies, lawsuits from Friends of the Little Frogs Who Live in the Way of the Proposed Rail Line, lawsuits from people who don't want their land condemned and/or a big loud train rumbling through the neighborhood.
2. Americans want the convenience of personal transportation.
Combine the aggravation of part 1 with the lack of demand in part 2 and you get the state of mass transit in the USA.
Re:Human Translated Links and More POVs (Score:4, Interesting)
If they then have to deal with a substantial loss in IP that would be a very, very serious blow to the Chinese government's efforts to draw in foreign investment as they're cheap, but they're not that cheap.
Re:well (Score:3, Interesting)
your country have mooched off of the resources of the world, by making it into a dominion, installing puppet dictators to repress the people for its own benefit, and even setting up super-secret organizations to do very filthy shit in 1st world countries in order to protect its 'interests'.
http://www.google.com/search?q=gladio&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a [google.com]
so, usa has been living the 'american dream' at the cost of people's lives and freedoms around the world. and it didnt pay a single dime for it, if you dont count repression by petty dictators, or assassinations as payment. and now, you come up complaining, talking about rights, paying back etc ?
if you talk about 'justice' one would expect all the generations that grew up living the 'american dream' to pay back to the world.
maybe thats exactly what they are doing, with all that outsourcing, offshoring their jobs. karma alleviation eh
not to mention that, china has bought that technology transfer with the deal they made 20 years ago.
Re:Human Translated Links and More POVs (Score:4, Interesting)
I would say very near 100%. Corporate executives are compensated based on quarterly performance. They got to where they are by being sociopaths, and power makes people more sociopathic. They don't give a rip about destroying their company two years from now; they can move on to their next victim, with a nice golden parachute on the way out-- see Carly Fiorina or Jonathan Miller.
We could mitigate this by requiring that most executive bonuses be deferred and scaled to performance of the company over, say, three years. This would have some nice side effects-- companies would have to reconsider layoffs and offshoring, for example.