Chinese brands get constantly harassed by Apple lawyers in the US about patents. Now that China is an important market for Apple, I find it hard to feel sorry for Apple getting a taste of their own medicine.
Remember the whole "click on a phone-number launch dialer" patent? We pulled the feature in the US phones, following the letter of the law since we lost the suit(back when Apple was going for Mfgrs instead of Google).
Apple filed an injunction with Customs right as we went into a huge marketing push for one of our devices. We had millions of phones sitting on the docks while FTC "investigated". 4-5 weeks later it was found that we hadn't violated, Apple never paid any fines and we had a ton of pissed off customers who couldn't get phones.
http://www.wired.com/2012/05/apples-patent-win-delays-shipme...
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-a-rogue-appea...
China is great in many ways, but it's IP / Copyright protection is abysmal and is used by the state as propaganda / propaganda control.
Portray China negatively in a film? Oh look, no sales the few theatres that are showing it have the scenes altered and of course don't pay royalties.
Neutrally portray China? Oh look about 1% of the royalties you were supposed to get.
Portray China positively? Blockbuster Chinese release. Unprecedented sales, collect nearly 80% of the royalties you were supposed to.
They have the same Real Politik handle on technology. They're not going to respect American Patents until it suits them. Not to say we're blameless; but if it is too asymmetrical I could see the west imposing levies to rectify the imbalance.
Start with requiring occupancy of all homes held by foreign nationals, trusts or investment groups, or you pay enormous property tax increases.
Then you require all US businesses selling consumer products to staff at least 1 US resident inspector for each stage of the supply chain from raw goods to finished product. If the host country doesn't like it, then you can't do business with that host country. This inspector may be called before Congress to answer personally (with jail time) for any human rights abuses not reported in the supply chain.
Even if the US is a relatively "clean" place to do business today, when we were the up and coming upstart, we stole plenty of ideas from abroad, and even within: the whole reason synecdotal Hollywood is in literal Hollywood is, movie producers snuck out there from the East Coast so they could infringe on Edison's film patents and get away with it.
Relatively poorer economies are never going to sit by and let large foreign industries dominate their economies if they can do anything about it. And we shouldn't expect relatively poorer economies to have deeply embedded free market economists explaining the theory of comparative advantage to every populist politician.
Unlikely to work. China knows what works in their country. I think the TPP approach where we just lay ground rules with people who actually respect us (ie: Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam) and try to get these countries to work with us instead of China... this is a better approach.
I mean, what is the US supposed to say to China? Stop doing things... in your country? That we don't like?
It's China's country. They can do whatever they want. Especially since US Companies are so enamored with the hope of making profits over there.
On the bright side, I've heard from some realtors that the previously-common occurrence of Chinese nationals patrolling for houses to buy with cash has dropped off substantially in 2016.
I live in a third-world country, where it has become almost impossible to get basic stuff (tools, lights, everyday household items) that doesn't break down after a month thanks to cheap Chinese knockoffs shamelessly muscling every other company off the local market. Almost nobody wants to stock "genuine" brands.
Even if I wasn't an Apple fan I would be rooting for them here; they seem to be the only company big enough to fight back against China's crap.
The worst part about this glut of Chinese products is that there's no one to complain to; nowhere to get customer support from, and you can't easily know who to avoid either because one company may make essentially the same thing in a hundred different guises with slight visual variation but the same lack of quality or safety control.
As for all the imitations, I don't even know why they do this. Why pretend to be a popular brand (sometimes with a slightly different logo and/or a typo in the name) instead of selling your own product and identity? Why make people the world over have to be consciously vigilant about avoiding Chinese imitations? What are they hoping to prove?
Back in the 80s and early 90s, "Made in Japan" became a synonym for quality and people sought out products with that written on them. China may have made their name globally relevant but to the general public it has become synonymous with shoddiness.
This would not be the first time this happened:
http://www.androidauthority.com/goophone-sue-apple-china-112...
And design patents are not considered to require examination as to content in the USA. They're just approved if the forms are filled out correctly.
And if any part of the design of a product (even just one rounded corner on a $700 phone) resembles a patented design, you're entitled to 100% of the profit ever made on that product in the USA. China is nowhere near that shifty.
It's very different from the 6, and Apple has launched the iPod Touch in 2012, which is practically identical to the 2014 iPhone 6.
I see it all the time on the Internet:
- Atheists are "just as bad as" [insert religious group with millennia-old history of atrocities.] -- Just because they both try to convince you of something.
- Politician A is "just as corrupt as" Politician B. -- Nevermind that A just gave his cousin a job, while B gave away $500B in contracts to his sponsors.
1. http://www.fastcompany.com/3015243/where-are-they-now/obama-...
I'm no fan of Apple's ways sometimes, but it's like comparing a borderline unscrupulous business to an organized crime outfit.
It would not surprise me one bit if this whole "patent violation" is nothing but a sham to fool people like you into believing there's some legitimacy behind efforts to sabotage Apple taking over the market from Chinese firms / state control.
now where is the iphone produced again? it's a chinese phone sans the IP (designed by apple in cali).
Even if the plaintiff is a patent troll, or merely an obscure company with a bogus patent? Even if this "patent tribunal" ruled incorrectly because of bias toward the domestic company? Even if the tribunal had been bribed by the company (pure speculation, but bribery is how you get things done in China's bureaucracy)?
I don't tend to have emotions one way or the other about these kinds of commercial and legal disputes, but corruption and patent trolling seems a lot more likely than big evil Apple stealing the innocent Baili Co.'s intellectual property and getting their comeuppance.