Pretty much the only way they were ever going to be punished is if they did something like this.
Could you point me to an official statement to that effect? Patent infringement lawsuits in China definitely paint a different picture: foreign companies are more likely to win and awarded higher damages than Chinese companies: https://patentlyo.com/patent/2018/02/things-infringement-lit...
So cherry-picked cases that range from 15-78% of the data set.
1.6k patent cases over multiple years seems -extremely- low to me. The USA has roughly 3-4x that per year. https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Revised-...
That's a fair point, although what kind of case would be a "cherry" is not clear to me. Both a foreign company winning (implying that patent infringement happened) and losing (possibly feeding suspicion that the judicial system is biased against foreigners) could end up making China look bad.
> 1.6k patent cases over multiple years seems -extremely- low to me.
My mistake. When I checked the blog post by the author of the paper for a date range, I thought it was since 2014 (and until publication in 2018), but actually those cases were all in 2014. (See page 10 of the paper.)
You could say this of the US too; SV is almost blatant about this.
Just like with breaking any laws, including those you deem to be "unjust", don't be surprised when you get hit with very expected legal consequences for doing so.
I think most of the countries on the planet should start to ignore these US sanctions when they are based on nonsense, especially when the underlying reasons are "regime change" related. Start routing around the SWIFT system as well.
One, medical masks don't seem to fall under the sanctions (according to the quick wikipedia article skimming I just did [0]), especially since they were donated, so it seems perfectly fine and legal.
Two, according to the same article, EU also has sanctions against Iran (with some differences from sanctions imposed by the US), so it is unfair to say that the US is the sole country posing those sanctions.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_sanctions_agains...
Not sure exactly which (though I guess there are). Nonetheless, after the JCPOA was signed, EU companies had restarted doing business worth billions with Iran. So the current complete freeze of EU commercial exchanges whit Iran in entirely due to the threat of sanctions from the US (that is, sanctions against EU companies, not against Iran).
There is also another list of resolutions imposed by UN on Iran, with some of them being sanctions as well [1]. UN Security Council resolution #1929 specifically seems to be very relevant:
>[...] prohibit the opening of Iranian banks on their territory and prevent Iranian banks from entering into relationship with their banks if it might contribute to the nuclear program, and prevent financial institutions operating in their territory from opening offices and accounts in Iran. The resolution passed by a vote of 12–2, with Turkey and Brazil voting against and Lebanon abstaining. A number of countries imposed measures to implement and extend these sanctions, including the United States, the European Union, Australia, Canada, Japan, Norway, South Korea, and Russia.
0.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93European_Union_re...
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Nations_resolut...