One day the "director of sales"? walked into the standup meeting like Vince McMahon into the arena and slammed down this robot onto the coffee table that was a pitch-perfect copy of the Roomba, except it was tea green and had more colorful LEDs and sounds. "F this and F that" like we had any ability to stop that from happening. I did the teardown and it was a near-perfect mechanical copy like somebody walked the molds across the street. The PCB was different where they chose cheaper connectors. It was way prettier looking IMO. What they couldn't copy was the logic; the SW/uC was handled through a different chain so unless you literally stole a pile of programmed parts, you'd be on your own. The Roomba development team consoled themselves that the performance of floor coverage of this knock-off was worse than the original...but to be frank, both were only useful under limited circumstances that I found nobody I knew had. I'd have better luck with an old sweep-broom.
As an intern, those returns piling up were so they wouldn't get resold elsewhere or scavenged. And there were a LOT of returns; its a complicated design with a LOT of cables and connectors and some marginal components going out of the expected tolerances. One of my jobs was to strip out the batteries, lay these robots out in the back parking lot, and using a pointed steel rod, 'spear-fish' them to render them unusable. To make my work quick I'd aim for the 'brain' - the middle where the case was thin and I'd bust through the microcontroller part of the main PCB. Aim, 'crunch', make sure I 'killed' it, and then fling it into the dumpster. Nearly 20 years on, I fondly remember thinking 'I can't believe I get paid to do this!'
My personal experience/conclusions drawn from business, experiences in grad school etc. (so obviously not worth much and poorly sourced from a data perspective) are that certain seemingly obvious concepts like "cheating" or "stealing" are just fundamentally understood differently and not ingrained in a Western compatible way culturally in China. There seems to be deep differences there that manifest in all kinds of ways.
> We examine the unique manufacturing ecosystem that has emerged, gaining access to the world’s leading hardware-prototyping culture whilst challenging misconceptions from the west. The film looks at how the evolution of “Shanzhai” – or copycat manufacturing – has transformed traditional models of business, distribution and innovation, and asks what the rest of the world can learn from this so-called “Silicon Valley of hardware".
1: https://www.bunniestudios.com 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY
This idea of "cultural differences in the idea of stealing" is a bit silly. It's based on self-reports of the people who are stealing, and making massive amounts of money from the theft. Rationalizations, in other words.
In all honesty, if I could "steal" from a culture with a far superior level of technology without repercussion, in order to sell products mainly within my own culture, I'd do it too. It's still a benefit to the whole group, isn't it? The same story plays out every time this power dynamic comes up, and in far more varied patterns than people talk about (e.g. Japan "stealing" transistor designs to start its electronics giants, with the cooperation of a few Americans but still against moral values).
Also the story goes that the Wild West was so famous for not enforcing Edison’s patents, an entire industry formed to take advantage: Hollywood.
Using the word "stealing" is fundamentally wrong about intellectual creations.
What frustrating me more is that Roborock cannot use the double-roller design iRobot has due to patents.
Every major English-speaking social media/web forum has been embroiled with open hatred towards everyone and everything Chinese regardless of context or politics for more than a half decade by now.
[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/06/we-were-pirates-too/
What did he do? He worked in a factory and memorized details about the machines, and then went to America and rebuilt them.
Is that what Chinese companies are doing? Do they get someone hired at the company, who then memorizes things, and then goes back to China and rebuilds them?
No one would care if China was operating the way Slater operated. That is common even with Americans moving from one American company to another. What is not common is directly stealing designs and schematics and billions of bits of other information through nefarious means, by breaching a company's cyber security or infiltrating their supply line.
I wanted to work in the US designing hardware with my Computer Engineering degree, but I couldn't even find a job doing that. Now I'm in B2B software like everyone else.
In a lot of cases, Western companies go as far as outsourcing the entire design process to China. Entire consumer product categories are just white labeled Chinese designs.
We are long past the point of China doing some crude copy and pasting. It isn't Soviet Russia making exact copies and producing poor quality facsimiles. The West needs to stop thinking of China's economic might as something that was only acquired by "cheating."
This is where we are at: Huawei has better image processing software than Apple. Roborock has more features and a more intelligent robot vacuum than iRobot. TikTok is better than Instagram or Facebook. BYD sells more EVs than Tesla. Which Western company makes an off-street EV utility vehicle with a dump bed, air conditioning, and infotainment like this one?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bixJDOH864U
This isn't really at all about China "copying" or "stealing" Western IP, because Chinese products are quite often better than Western ones at lower prices.
The idea that China isn't its own R&D powerhouse is, at this point, an insult to the individuals who are creating all of this stuff.
Why can't American companies study the Chinese products and do the same in turn?
So USA can only watch, while China can actually steal.
In the car industry, it's standard practice for every company to buy every model from every other company to study it.
I'm interested, please link to that.
Does it really matter?
That’s a big reason behind the push to SaaS and server based solutions.
> there’d be a Chinese knock off on the market for half the price
in the case of worse quality, wouldn't the market just filter out such inferior products via competition? same with labor practices and bad pr from that.
additionally, if the 'minor improvements' are what people want (sometimes as a trade-off to quality) then thats what the market has signaled it prefers...
if the originating company doesn't meet that preference or demand, why should some admittedly state-provided protection (some might say monopoly) of intellectual property be able to protect them from competitors who will?
I’m glad we don’t have to deal with this issue as much in software. I can’t imagine that a world where all the companies actually tried to enforce their software patents would be better for anyone but the lawyers.
If it's okay to copy something in the legal way that Compaq did it, why is it not legal to skip the clean room and just copy a design?
I don't mean espionage and actual stealing of code/schematics (I don't think many Chinese companies engage in that, contrary to the perception). I mean, the company buys the product, inspects it, then copies it.
If Compaq had done that directly, it would have been illegal, but the outcome would have been the same as the clean room design.
I question the merits of having that level of copy protection where reverse engineering is only legal in a specific and arbitrarily convoluted way. To me it seems like that idea might encourage monopolies and higher prices for everyone.
All companies are reverse engineering the Universe anyway. It's not like you build these technologies out of thin air.
I’ve never talked to any rational person with an idea they were passionate about who said they weren’t interested in continuing with it because someone else might steal it.
A primary concern of any investor is whether you have a defensible 'moat" for your product or service - can you make something that will then have a high barrier to entry of competitors.
If you cannot articulate how you will have reasonably solid protection from patents. copyright, or trade secret practices, good luck getting investment.
Your only strategy will be to somehow make & stock ready to ship as much of your easily copied product as you can before promoting it, and hope your promotion, marketing, and initial sales are a huge hit BEFORE some Chinese rip-off artist starts marketing it on AliBaba in single-digit days. I've read of cases where people had their product literally found for sale on Chinese sites before their first marketing & customer shipments started, because the design was ripped off from the factory.
I am not getting anything designing work for you. On the other hand I can launch my own side projects. I know that if they are any good people are going to copy and start rip offs. I am willing to take that risk.