Samsung's folding screen tech has been stolen and sold to China
cnn.com
cnn.com
We saw this with the Japanese bullet trains, we saw this with self driving tech, and now it's display tech.
You could argue that the consumers benefit the most over time. But it's definitely unfair to those who have dedicated their lives to researching these technologies, only to see it get stolen and even re-licensed as China's own (as what happened with the bullet trains).
The rest of the world should stop playing by Chinese's rules and be firm in their stance like the US - Eg. if China doesn't enforce strict IP rules, then people should seek alternatives and stop dealing with them. Even India/Vietnam/Malaysia/etc. are better bets in comparison. Especially when these schemes are sponsored by the Chinese government 9 times out of 10.
And I’m pretty sure that was the US strategy during the Industrial Revolution. Or the European strategy when it came to stealing Chinese silk making methods.
I guess great powers steal alike.
Theft is immoral. I can't just sneak into your home, steal your stuff and walk away saying you're holding mankind back, can I? That's the analogy in the OP.
The Chinese companies merely duplicated the know how.
So US, Japan, Korea got the advantage by copying why not give the same advantage to China?
If your argument is because its wrong then are the other countries who benefited by copying going to be punished?
To the Chinese, theft of IP is just business as usual.
Every single firm I've personally encountered that has done biz in China has either already had their IP stolen and sold in competition with it (or just products sold out the back door w/o label), or fully expects that it would happen and takes strong defensive strategies, e.g., sending pre-mixed materials to China where they only do the final process.
This is not sustainable. While the West thinks that we were exploiting China for it's cheap labor, the Chinese had a much longer range view -- they were exploiting our myopic lust for short-term profits to get our most valuable assets and gain long-term strategic advantage, both in both commercial and military technology.
This is likely to go down as one of history's greatest strategic blunders.
I wonder if it has already gone too far for us to recover.
China knows exactly what they're doing.
The WTO riots in Seattle were partly because this was an obviously dumb strategy that sold out the well-being of the public for the enrichment of a few elites.
And Europe did to China in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Wedgewood porcelain and Sevres...
But that doesn't mean we shouldn't take defensive measure. Do defend our IP because that's our self-interest. Don't do it with the moral pretense.
I'm fully aware the actions require a response
It just means that defensive measures will not be successful.
Edit: expanding: the technology wasn't stolen in the same sense as today, because the Chinese couldn't not wanted to export and sell the technology back to the West. But US/Europe today are getting their IP stolen, and immediately sold to them. That's the asymmetry.
Right now it's in transition.
There's a lesson there.
Sure, cutting-edge intellectual property these days is more complicated and unlikely to be completely and fully understood by a single person. That's a function of the progress of technology.
I don't see how one person, or one country, stealing IP via memorization (the technology of the 1800s) is meaningfully different from someone stealing IP on a USB stick (the technology of today).
The cost of labour and compliance with health and safety is the main factor.
Is it surprising the Chinese industrialist looks at the rate of profit for these goods sold in the USA and tries to copy them, and secure some of that gap between cost (of production) and price?
So now, thinking like a US consumer, which is better? The iPhone sold by Steve jobs, or the cheaper phone with stolen IPR? What if the stolen IPR is totally ephemeral and only about the GUI?
An example from within Europe: http://www.muranoglass.com/en/news-en/ten-facts-you-did-not-...
And I also suspect you're not understanding the relative value of those processes (glass, tea, porcelain, etc) to the economy of those areas vs the current relative value of the "product of thousands of engineers".
You're describing it like it was a planned action. Is there any reason to describe it like that rather than exploiting an easy opportunity?
Even if they didn't originally conceive of it as a plan before Nixon/Kissinger's 'opening' (i.e., the original opportunity sort of fell into their lap), we can be quite sure that once they recognized the opportunity, they have made very careful long term plans to exploit it.
We can also observe that these plans are being diligently executed now.
There are no bad ideas, just bad timing.
That would be an insurmountable flaw, yes.
This piece from Reuters includes more details: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-samsung-elec/south-...
I guess someone in Samsung was just mad about the fact the world's first foldable phone was made by a Chinese company. https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/11/5/18067116/r...
Look at comments even in this topic - there's already ranting against China here. Not even HNers cared enough to read about who stole what. The propaganda objective has been reached.
Fashion seems to cope well without IP protection except trademarks.
And arguably a lot of human endeavors could be done less adversarially (such as pharma research, battery research, etc) but the lure of potential future profit drives a lot of R&D there.
So maybe the solution is to reserve IP for things that seem to work well only in a market race setup, but drop it to a few years in all other areas. And as we set up X prizes, a regulator/committee could designate specialized R&D races. (Or other kinds of IP incentives.)
Though who knows. Would Netflix produce new series/content without the 70 years of copyright? Well maybe not, but probably there wouldn't be a Netflix either if all that content were just p2p available from the Library after 4-5 years.
Instead of viewing it as such, why not try to understand the core of the problem - that the Chinese don't respect IP laws. There is no (proper) framework to even sue a Chinese company should IP theft occur, let alone get legal support from the government if you're a foreign company fighting against the Chinese. The government will always side with the local companies.
Remember this?
https://de.reuters.com/article/jaguar-land-rover-china-lawsu...
The solution is to help China reach a level where they can start to innovate and care about IP.
By that time, we will start complaining about the next country that steals IP.
Does the concept even apply?
Eventually, the international community made be forced to make this expensive enough that the costs outweigh the benefits.
Support for "Made in India 2025" seems to be the only viable alternative.
Why? See my other post below
This can only work (fast), when big corps can keep their profits.
The world is not perfect I'm afraid.
No one is here for a homework assignment. Please explain yourself to add to the discussion.
They are already destroying a lot of countries. They borrow money to them, so the Chinese can build their infrastructure. But there are almost no locals involved, so all the artificial inflation goes to China. The belt is just an excuse for colonizing the world ( or at least the harbors, strategic airports that they themselves have built, see Sri Lanka, they are the first to comply).
I think a lot of those countries that built a dam with Chinese money forget that maintenance costs a lot also. Reference: FIFA football stadiums
Ps. Feel free to share your concern