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Comment by simplexion | Hacker News Reader

"It’s about stealing something you can make a buck off of. It’s part of a strategy to profit off what American ingenuity creates."

This may be a quote of the assistant attorney general of the U.S. Department of Justice’s national security division which can be easily ignored but the next paragraph just makes it seem like the author wants you to accept the quote as fact.

"A 2013 study estimated that China accounted for as much as 80 percent of the $300 billion in losses sustained by U.S. companies from the theft of intellectual property."

What absolute nonsense. It truly makes this article come across as American propaganda.

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Do you have facts that counter that 80 percent number? I'm curious why you think the Chinese aren't stealing American intellectual property. It's not propaganda if it's true, and everything I've seen indicates that the Chinese are trying to steal American IP on a regular basis, so please state anything you know that counters this article.

The claim is about as hollow as the claim that software and media companies lose exorbitant amounts of money due to piracy. No, a large portion of that revenue would have been non-existent anyway for a number of reasons.

It reminds me of the time I attended the annual American Chamber of Commerce Asia conference in 2010, that year in Beijing. One of the keynote speakers was the Asia CEO for Honeywell. They went into China, tried to localize their products, and were slaughtered by copycats. He said a common saying among those copycats was that Honeywell created the market demand for industrial products that previously didn't actually exist in China before, but it took Chinese companies to supply products that actually met market needs at prices customers were willing to pay. Honeywell didn't cry foul and pout. They revised their R&D strategy to be able to make good local products from the ground up and fought back the way market competition should happen. He said the lessons they learned now form the base of their strategy for entering any new foreign markets.

Yeah, there are all sorts of shenanigans that can happen everywhere. The question should always be how do you fight back and win with something superior, not how do you cry foul.

So you're claiming that having people prosecuted for theft of IP is "pouting" and that companies should just accept it and not complain? So if I came to your company and stole all of your trade secrets you'd just say "Well played, I guess I'll just have to compete better!" Interesting.

Do bear in mind that DuPont got started with TiO2 by taking a patented process and just using it, screwing the Australian license holders.

Funny how they cry foul when the shoe is on the other foot.

I believe the most likely source is: http://www.ipcommission.org/report/IP_Commission_Report_0522...

The use of "as much as 80%" does suggest bias although it sounds little better and a bit awkward to use the more generous wording, "as little as 50%".

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