Back in 1812, finished cotton textiles dominated British exports, accounting for about half of all trade revenues, the fruit of a half century of progress in mechanized mass production. Proportionate to GDP, the industry was about three times the size of the entire U.S. automobile sector today. High-speed textile manufacture was a highly advanced technology for its era, and Great Britain was as sensitive about sharing it as the United States is with advanced software and microprocessor breakthroughs. The British parliament legislated severe sanctions for transferring trade secrets, even prohibiting the emigration of skilled textile workers or machinists. But the Americans had no respect for British intellectual property protections. They had fought for independence to escape the mother country’s suffocating economic restrictions. In their eyes, British technology barriers were a pseudo-colonial ploy to force the United States to serve as a ready source of raw materials and as a captive market for low-end manufactures. While the first U.S. patent act, in 1790, specified that "any person or persons" could file a patent, it was changed in 1793 to make clear that only U.S. citizens could claim U.S. patent protection.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/06/we-were-pirates-too/

https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-02-18/us-complains-other-na...

Because it's profitable.

Once upon a time, Japan was perceived the way we currently perceive China : a land where cheap, flimsy knockoffs were produced. The first camera made by Canon (which is, today, the most popular camera manufacturers in many segments of photography, such as journalism) was a 100% copy of Leica designs. There was literally no innovation whatsoever, just copy of german engineering.

But once the corporations acquired the base know how, developed better quality control and started to gain popularity in the low end, they reinvested their money into R&D, and they now are one of the best brands of the market, cornering both the low end and the high end. Almost every single western camera brand died except for Leica, which survived mostly on selling brand recognition to people who have more money than sense (this is particularly true for the people who buy the idiotic non-rangefinder Leica camera that are actually made by Panasonic which are virtually identical to other panasonic lumix models and sold at a premium because there's a Leica badge).

Most well known japanese brands started like Canon.

I believe we're already starting to see the transition from 'eh, knockoff' to companies that are reinvesting in R&D in China and this is going to eat at all the markets previously corned by silicon valley giants. Good smartphones are already a commodity. I have the Honor 8, which is made by Huawei, who build their own system-on-chips like Apple and Samsung. It's still running as fast as it was on day one and I probably won't feel the need to change for something else as long as it keeps working. The only thing they need to improve on is the camera quality and if they can manage to rival top end smartphones in terms of cameras in the future they will lay waste upon Samsung. Apple might survive because like Leica they have a heavy contingent of people with more money than sense that are loyal to status symbols/veblen goods.

Not sure why I'm being downvoted, it's a perfect example of a difficult problem (creating the metal ball) taking a long time to figure out when there isn't a shortcut. It's not a value judgement, other countries have had longer to figure this stuff out.