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Comment by firesteelrain | Hacker News Reader

Yes, I agree that China can copy Sherline’s IP and it’s a form of theft. An estimated 70-80% of the parts can probably be made in China. If you would like a breakdown I can provide it.

Sherline, for example, specifies spindle nose runout of 0.0005 inch or less and spindle end play around 0.0002 inch or less, using two 20-mm ball bearings with adjustable preload. That’s only about 13 µm runout. A Chinese factory can absolutely manufacture that.

Manufacturers such as SIEG took conventional lathe architecture and mass-produced it.

There is nothing original going on there lots of copying

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If you can quote spindle runout, you know perfectly well that there's no meaningful IP in this market segment. That would have been achievable by any number of manufacturers a hundred years ago.

It's a pure manufacturing cost play to make something precise enough, rigid enough, and light enough[0] while being inexpensive enough for the market segment it's aimed at.

Is it a bummer that a US manufacturer went out of business trying to make money at that play? Yes. Is there anything nefarious going on with IP theft? Absolutely not.

[0] This is being sold to customers who don't hire riggers to move their machines.

how does a small US manufacturer compete when a foreign producer can duplicate 70–80% of the functional product at a fraction of the cost?

They can't. But how is that unfair? It's literally a choice we made.

And it's the one thing that unites every mainstream politician against Trump - they can't agree on tons of stuff, other than that we definitely should not be using tariffs to defend local manufacturers against Chinese (or any other) imports. I've been assured that those jobs are "not coming back." Well, big surprise - they're also not going to stop disappearing.

I agree some policy choices were made to get us in this situation. Biden largely left the first Trump era tariffs in place. The disagreements are on the broadness of them

This isn't "clones/copying," but rather "Chinese people making things." It isn't like they're stealing our exclusive "lathe technology." They're just making lathes.

It's certainly destructive to local companies, but that's what tariffs are for. If you think we should be making lathes, then throw tariffs on countries that make them cheaper. If that just moves the pressure to a consumer who still can't afford local lathes, stop handing free money to stockholders and real estate owners and start handing it to people who buy things.

This is all a bit of a strawman. Lathe technology as a concept isn’t being disputed as stolen. Tariffs don’t fix the copying problem. My point is the country in general has a policy of copying and stealing

But isn't this completely fine ? The US became an industrial powerhouse by doing the same. Even barred foreign inventors from obtaining parents in the US. The U.S. Patent Act of 1793 was explicitly structured to favor domestic industrial growth at the expense of foreign inventors. Provided total legal immunity within the U.S. for commercializing pirated ideas. Only when the US became #1, did international protection of its patents became a priority.

China merely followed the American approach towards industrial success.

I don’t think it’s completely fine to steal others technologies and products no. There are ways to be competitive and in an ethical manner

The idea that ideas can be stolen and that doing so is wrong is fairly new and somewhat "unnatural". So the ethics of "stealing ideas" are not entirely well-defined. I think the only thing that almost everyone agrees on is that the person who had an idea first (or at least popularized it) should get recognition for it.

Huh? Patent systems go back hundreds of years! Yes nobody owns the idea of the lathe. We need to get past that. But for centuries, societies have recognized that someone who spends time and money developing a particular invention or manufacturing process can have legit rights to it

Its more: "Do as we say, not as we do". Lots of traditional techniques were appropriated and patented by the West and your nation deliberately ignored patents during its industrialization phase. But when the East that threw off the shackles of colonialism does so, oh my god, it is theft.

"Steal to get ahead, but suppress others who steal after you are ahead"

Ok that’s pretty creative to say “America did it 200 years ago” into a permanent license to copy and steal. Hell of a standard

US removed the choke of colonialism 250 years ago and ignored patents freely until well into the 20th century. And even today, a foreign patent isn't automatically enforceable in America.

India had to fight extremely hard in USPTO to stop Indian turmeric from being patented. Perhaps you folks should go into Chinese offices and fight for years to be equitable.

This isn’t the gotcha you think it is. They do.

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