China Becoming Intellectual Property Powerhouse 140
eldavojohn writes "A lot of Westerners view China as little more than the world's factory manufacturing anything with little regard to patents, copyrights and trademarks. But it seems as far as patents go, China is moving on up. According to the WIPO, the company that applied for the most patents in 2008 was not an American or Japanese company but China's Huawei Technologies. And China has made astonishing ground recently moving up to third place with 203,257 patent applications behind Japan (500,000) and the United States (390,000). It remains to be seen if these patents applications will come to fruition for China but it is evident that they are focusing on a new image as a leader in research and development. The Korean article concentrates on 2008 but you can find 2009 statistics at the WIPO's report on China along with some statistics breaking down applications by industry."
This ought to be good. (Score:3, Funny)
I wonder how long it will be until "intellectual property" lawyers start complaining about their cases being outsourced?
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I wonder how long 'til US will become the strongest opponent to ACTA?
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Oh man, you mean lawyers can be made cheaper overseas? I smell money...
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And have you noticed that there is no intellectual property protection for legal arguments and tactics? Someone could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of lawyer time to develop a new innovative legal defense, and then someone else can apply the same defense without paying a dime to the first party! Where's the incentive to innovate? Why is the patent establishment, the congress (largely composed of lawyers) and the lobbying industry working on IP protections for other industries while so blat
This is good news (Score:1)
Do they even care over there? (Score:3, Interesting)
That'll be interesting to see.
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They don't have to, it sure helps China for the rest of the world to care though.
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Given 50 years or so, maybe.
The USA was built in this fashion; it lifted designs, works and all kinds of "Intellectual Property" from Europe, and used it as it wished. Unsurprisingly, unencumbered by restrictive laws, it grew fast in the intellectual works arena, at which point people (the ones who'd made a profit this way) wanted to keep things as they were, and so lobbied for ever more restrictive legislation to ensure nobody could get a slice of their pie.
And now, another country starts doing exactly th
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Unsurprisingly, unencumbered by restrictive laws, it grew fast in the intellectual works arena, at which point people (the ones who'd made a profit this way) wanted to keep things as they were, and so lobbied for ever more restrictive legislation to ensure nobody could get a slice of their pie
The US remained predominately rural and agricultural until 1860.
That is 250 years out from the Jamestown Settlement.
In 1790 the U.S. produced 3,000 bales of cotton.
In 1860, 3.8 million.
In 1860 six manufactuers control
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I doubt they'll be enforced in China... but I have no doubt that they will be enforced in the west, against western companies.
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does that mean that they might actually start enforcing IP rights?
Why? Wouldn't it be easier to just apply patents in the US and sue US companies for profit? Who cares about enforcing IP rights back home, those companies back home have no money to sue for anyway.
I think we found step 2 (Score:4, Informative)
1. Disregard foreign patents
2. Acquire patents for use against foreign firms
3. PROFIT!
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When you owe a bank $100,000, you have a problem. When you owe a bank $100,000,000,000, the bank has a problem.
If the U.S. ever decides to default on its loan to China and/or China decides to dump all its monopoly money reserves, China (more specifically, the Chinese government) will be feeling the pain far more than the U.S.
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When you owe a bank $100,000,000,000, the bank has a problem. If the U.S. ever decides to default on its loan to China
It's not even the same problem. Why would the US ever have to default?
The problem is more like: when TheLink owes the bank 2 trillion payable in TheLink tokens, the bank has a problem, not me.
Since I can create as many tokens as I want :).
Think about it more, and you'll see how even more ridiculous the scaremongering about Evil China screwing and holding America to ransom is.
Sure if the USA creates too many trillions out of thin air, people might stop lending them money, but I think they've already created
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If the US just printed money to pay off China, it would still be fucking itself and its citizens over.
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1) They have already printed trillions. As I said in my post, google for: federal reserve trillions.
Example: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=armOzfkwtCA4 [bloomberg.com]
And they've been trying to hide it: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-03-19/fed-loses-bid-for-review-of-disclosure-ruling-on-u-s-bank-bailout-records.html [bloomberg.com]
Quote: "Bloomberg has been trying for almost two years to break down a brick wall of secrecy in order to vindicate the public's right to learn basic information," Golden wrote i
Re:I think we found step 2 (Score:5, Insightful)
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See the thing about China is that they don't know when to quit. When they were a tiny economy they could get away with a lot of this bullshit but now they are acting like a big kid whose parents never disciplined him.
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You are off by an order of magnitude. Japan is roughly 1/10th of China in terms of population, and even smaller in landmass. If China follows the exact growth path of Japan as you suggested, its economy will inevitably be 10x of Japan, or roughly 4x of U.S. by today's numbers. If anything, Japan (or for that matter, other smaller Asian powerhouses such as South Korean, Taiwan etc.) are only previews, teaser trailers of what China has to become.
On a side note, if you go back 300 years instead of 30, China
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You are also neglecting HUGE parts of China's history as well. China has a habit of forming incredibly large empires that crumble apart within the span of less than a decade. It has had very long periods of self-imposed isolation and stagnation.
You also mention demographics in terms of populatio
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Lets go back 30 years, you could say the same thing except for %s/China/Japan/g . But Japan never became the supreme economic giant.
Uh, yes it did. It was the world's #1 economic power for a time. Your entire comment is disqualified on this basis.
Why? Because their economy was built on the EXACT same unsustainable economic model that the Chinese economy is built on.
Japan is no longer #1 because economics is bullshit and they were never the most powerful nation on the planet. They did have control of more money than anyone else for a moment, though. The USA is the world's #1 power because we have natural resources and we are not using them up. This will keep us on top for quite some time. The hope is that technology evolves to the point where the raw mater
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You pretty much described how USA moved from a rural colony to a technological powerhouse.
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I doubt that would matter. China has a competitive advantage in the manufacturing side, so unless you can infringe on a patent and beat them out in making whatever, infringing a patent really wouldn't be too much of a big deal.
Of course, this doesn't take into account any software patents. But I guess the lack of worker's rights in China probably make their coding competitive for similar reasons that their manufacturing is.
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what country in their right mind would respect the patents of China if they continued to disregard everyone elses'?
I see this claim being made repeatedly through the thread but so far these words have been backed up with nothing more than patriotism. Please feel free to cite your sources at any moment.
Are any of these worth a damn? (Score:1)
Who didn't see this coming? (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember back when outsourcing and offshorting really started to ramp up and the whole mentality was, "The U.S. will become a nation of intellectual property holders and high-level managers while the rest of the world does the grunt work".
China is known for making knock-offs and stealing intellectual property. If China controls the majority of manufacturing and "grunt" work, then they ultimately have complete access to everything and nothing will really stop them from yanking the rug out from under the idiot outsourcers who didn't see it coming and assumed they could maintain all the power and wealth without doing any of the real work.
Who run Bartertown?
and when china workers stand up for rights then mo (Score:3, Insightful)
and when china workers stand up for rights then manufacturing will just move to next cheap place.
The last cheap place is Africa, It's a mess. (Score:2)
A really bad ugly un-fixable mess.
The really bad part: Africa is smaller then China in terms of population.
Africa: Not unfixable (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The last cheap place is Africa, It's a mess. (Score:5, Interesting)
A really bad ugly un-fixable mess.
As bad and ugly as it would be, the chinese are already [moneyweb.com] there.
China's investment in Africa has grown by as much as 30% annually, faster than in any other continent, from $1.6-billion in 2008 to $5.4-billion in 2009. About 2000 Chinese companies are engaged in 8000 projects in Africa, mainly in infrastructure and agriculture.
And here [ninemsn.com.au] you have some other numbers: "Beijing says its trade with Africa is on track to top $US100 billion ($A103.5 billion) this year" (this year means less than 3 months now, isn't it?)
To put the things in perspective: in July 2009, US owed China 900+ billion [treas.gov] (without counting the trade deficit with China) - 10% of money that US owes China will go into Africa in less than 3 month!?!
For your survival: learn mandarin!
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Truth, and both the Chinese and the "next cheap place" will be happier for it. Even the US will be happier, although perhaps not in the short term.
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Truth, and both the Chinese and the "next cheap place" will be happier for it. Even the US will be happier, although perhaps not in the short term.
I reckon long before they'll be happier, I believe US risks a de-jure disapperance from the world scene (they'll still be there but this won't matter anymore). To avoid a "Flamebite" moderation let me bring this (maybe lame) joke from memory:
Q:How would be the men without women?
A:Happy... then happier... then lesser by the day... then...
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as a whole do they even have a spine?
I know the bigwigs do, I know a few college students do, but for the other billion its presented as take it or go off and die, its really hard to stand up when there are thousands willing to dive into your seat
what about the American worker? I once watched a local company go on strike from their 26$ an hour fluff jobs and retirement plans to get their birthday's as a paid holiday
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We aren't talking about human rights in general, but the inevitable fact that as labour gets more scarce, workers' power increases. This is very much happenening now in China - interesting article from the Economist: The rising power of the Chinese worker [economist.com].
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and when china workers stand up for rights then manufacturing will just move to next cheap place.
what rights?
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and when china workers stand up for rights then manufacturing will just move to next cheap place
That might work in India but it's not likely in China. The Chinese government has absolute control of what its' citizens see, hear and think. Anyone remember The Tiananmen Square protests in 1989? By some estimates there were as many as 3000 people killed and countless others injured. The government also purged officials who were thought to support the liberal students and intelectuals that started the demonstration. I seriously doubt there will be any Chinese workers standing up for their rights if the job
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Re:Who didn't see this coming? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Who didn't see this coming? (Score:4, Informative)
You presumably mean they COULDN'T care less. Saying the exact opposite of what you mean is a bad way to (try to) communicate.
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Maybe he's a US (or European) manager?
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natural competition and evolution (Score:2)
Have you heard of competitions? You can blame the high-level managers, MBAs and lawyers, but it is nevertheless a natural progression of the economy: productions will be moved to where they can be done in the lowest cost yet with good enough quality. Outsourcing and offshoring have become popular only in recent decades, not because managers, lawyers or MBAs were nicer, dumber or ignorant these tricks, but because outsourcing and offshoring have become affordable due to the new transportation and communicati
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Anyone who actually believes is in the 'innovation economy' is an idiot. The includes a surprising number of academics for some reason.
Apart from 'stealing' technology, there are a whole host of other reasons.
1. Without low-level work, you won't get good people going into the field in the first place. Just picture yourself as a top 10% high-school kid planning your future career. You can risk becoming and engineer/scientists/entrepreneur who will work their ass off in the rare hope of making it big....
Obviously (Score:2, Funny)
This has already happened (Score:5, Informative)
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No, that's not true. There are two reasons. One is for the reason you state. The other is that at the time, los angeles was a tar pit and a bunch of tumbleweeds in the desert, and they were shooting westerns. They didn't have to go anywhere to shoot, so it was an ideal location to which to move. They could have moved almost anywhere to get the same legal benefits.
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Good point. It could also be said that a large, well established industry churns out more of the kind of ideas that lead to patents and trademarked entities in particular. The infrastructure of investment, money for legal fees, and so on is in place in an established industry.
Given that copyright protection attaches without legal filing, I'm not sure there's such a powerful relationship in the world of copyright.
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Interestingly, I believe this points out the fallacy of IP protection being a driving force to innovation. It appears that the people most in the position of inventing new products are those that are already in a similar or related industry. Since most innovation is incremental, we see a dozen companies come out with similar products even though most of the engineers doing the development would have never even seen their competitors patents.
Yes, I will admit that occasionally you see an invention that is cl
"Microsoft" style? (Score:1, Flamebait)
Sounds more like buying a place in legal system/national pride based on pure numbers.
Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
> China's Huawei Technologies
Would that be the same Huawei Technologies that stole Cisco IOS code and who's rep was caught photographing chipboards of Cisco gear in the Cisco booth after hours?
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Plus the same Huawei that caused Finland to go one step closer to a police state. After they stole inside information from Nokia, a bill allowing the tracking of employee communications was passed as Lex Nokia [wikipedia.org].
i'd love for someone to explain... (Score:2)
...Precisely why we should pay any more respect for their IP than they have to anyone else's?
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...Precisely why we should pay any more respect for their IP than they have to anyone else's?
I'm going to go one step further and ask candidely ask for an explanation: why should I pay respect for any intelectual property?
Granted, there are some good reasons but, I believe, lately these reasons start being overshadows by other major reasons to NOT respect them.
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It wouldn't matter, because 'their' IP and 'your' IP are protected by the same system. So by not respecting 'their' IP, you also cease to respect your own.
BTW, I see nothing wrong with this, and IMO, getting rid of this mess of IP law would go far to 'promoting the useful arts'.
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They are 'protected' by the same system only if we're both playing by the rules, which was my original point.
If we're playing cards, I'm playing by the rules and you're cheating at every hand, I'm not sure that's a great argument for the quality or usefulness of the 'rules'.
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Not quite. They may be cheating at every hand at the table across from you. But, at your table, the rules are still being enforced - by you. And unfortunately, those rules are benefitting the other player(s) more than they benefit you.
Let me help you, US. (Score:1, Interesting)
For all your good work on software patents, an useful link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11487968
Enjoy!
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Ni How Ma?
china also advancing in basic academic RnD (Score:2)
I see this particularly in chemistry journals like Analytical Chemistry, Langmuir and J of the American Chem Soc (all 3 published by Amer Chem Soc). Less so in the top flight molecular and cell biology journals. It would be really fascinating to get some data on this.
There is at best only a tenuous connection... (Score:2)
...between patents and innovation.
Rampant Fraud in China (Score:3, Informative)
How many of those patents are legitimate, and not fraudulent of plagiarizing?
"Rampant Fraud Threatens China's Brisk Ascent"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/world/asia/07fraud.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all [nytimes.com]
One of the points the article highlights is that in Chinese culture, blatant cheating and shameless plagiarism is fine. It's just being "smart" to get ahead. Nice culture to force your hard-working population to compete with.
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From what I have looked at, I would not call many of these "legitimate" in terms of whether enforcing them (if even possible) would do the world any good. But then, IMHO hardly any patents in my field, applied in any country or by companies from any country, are what I would call legitimate. Patent trolling is so ethically reprehensible that anyone deciding to join the game might as well commit plagiarism/fraud/bribery/etc. as long as they don't get caught. It's a fair game like spying in a war.
Patents as a measure of intellect? Bah (Score:2)
Patents and papers (Score:1)
America's fault. (Score:2)
america created its own menace, again. and in the process, created another menace, the patents, for entire world. it is quite wondersome, how america is able to create godzilla scale menaces on its own, to menace itself back, while goi
patents!=innovations (Score:1)
Considering the absurdity of some patents granted in the past years, I seriously doubt that the number of paptens on file is a good indicator of technical prowess. It merely shows the strengh of the IP regime
Re:Probably Stolen (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree. Last I heard, they only enforced IP rights when non-Chinese companies infringed (or appeared to infringe) upon a Chinese company's IP.
Anyone know if China's still doing that? (with references)
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Re:Probably Stolen (Score:5, Insightful)
How is that different from the good ole US of A?
The mighty US publishing industry was built on infringing (or stealing, or whatever) the copyrights of European authors for so many decades it may be close to a century or two.
Then, the markets grew and Hollywood developed a solid relationship with Washington during WWII doing propaganda shit. The studios and the publishing companies started making money off American productions.
And suddenly - lo and behold - the US government changed its mind on the matter, joined the various copyright conventions and went on to become the world champion of copyright and related rights.
You're seeing China doing exactly the same thing, only 80 years later, using (and perhaps abusing) the very framework US put in place.
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80 years? The US was stealing from Europe well before that. The UK had the death penalty for people caught stealing certain technology. However, there is a very big difference. The US didn't have a WIPO treaty back then that bound them to honer Intellectual Property. China does. They wanted all the benefits of WTO/WIPO, but doesn't want to actual honor their end of the deal.
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Sorry, my last paragraph is not very clear. I meant about 80 years since US started to consider the various copyright organizations seriously, and move towards being protective of copyright and related rights internationally.
As for the WTO/WIPO treaties, correct me if I'm wrong, but they are more of a negotiating framework that facilitates resolution of trade disputes and coordination of domestic legislation than bodies that actually draft binding agreements.
The rulings of the WTO are, more or less, fact-fi
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We have companies suing the pants off of people for illegally downloading music, and you're saying the USA doesn't respect IP?
"The mighty US publishing industry was built on infringing (or stealing, or whatever) the copyrights of European authors for so many decades it may be close to a century or two"
What's your reference on this point? Give me a source. Keep in mind that international law was not the same thing then as it is now. In a sense, it took two world wars, the invent of the nuclear bomb, and t
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For a good overview of how "intellectual property" became what it is today in the US, see, for example, this book:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_(book) [wikipedia.org]
It will answer all your questions above, and more, and provide quite a lot of examples. It is also free.
The 1930s were a miserable time to live in the US.
How is that even related to the topic at hand, which is history of copyright and related rights?
(Incidentally, US may have been bad, but the rest of the world had it a lot worse, and a large part of that was due to the myopic protectionist legisl
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My understanding of this was it went both ways back then, US authors had their works published in Europe without their permission as well.
Re:Probably Stolen (Score:4, Insightful)
Ignorant troll is ignorant.
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In what I have read the claims are the opposite -- that authors were rarely paid anything if the work wasn't properly copyrighted in the US by the author (which wasn't easy back then, so it wasn't typically done).
Do you know some specific authors that made money without taking out a US copyright? That would be quite an interesting sideline to the supposed general trend.
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Ah, I see what you mean by "early access", thanks.
I can't even guess how significant is that versus the people who allegedly lost on their work being published without payment.
It would be interesting to compare the numbers somehow.
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Re:Probably Stolen (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree. Last I heard, they only enforced IP rights when non-Chinese companies infringed (or appeared to infringe) upon a Chinese company's IP.
Anyone know if China's still doing that? (with references)
Where are your references that they actually did that?
On a side note, several years back I attended a speech by David Martin, who is founder/CEO of the company M-CAM [m-cam.com], which is specialised in evaluating patent portfolios (such as determining how many claims overlap with other patents, likely validity etc). It was so interesting that I transcribed [ffii.org] it. That page also contains the audio recording.
One of the things he mentioned is that China has a requirement that whenever the state purchases technology from a foreign interest, all "IP" for enabling technologies and know-how must be transferred as well. Many Western companies figured the Chinese wouldn't know/comprehend the exact patent rights they gave to the Chinese, so they only transferred rights to second-rate patents that weren't worth the paper they weren't printed on (crappy patents don't only exist in the software world). Once the Chinese caught up with this practice,
It's easy to accuse the Chinese of "stealing" everything, but (just making up these numbers) what if 48% of what's supposedly stolen should actually have been transferred to them in the first place according to contractual obligations (nobody ever forced those companies to do business there if they didn't like the terms), 48% consists of bogus patents and the other 2% is simply the equivalent of the Nokia/Apple/Google/Microsoft/HTC/LG/... patent infringement lawsuits that you have in the US mobile industry (are all those companies "thieves", copycats etc)?
I also think the "Probably stolen?" subject of this thread shows incredible ignorance. China probably has more engineering majors graduating every year than any other country in the world. Do you honestly think that the Chinese for some reason are inherently more stupid than us Westerners and cannot come up with anything innovative? Especially "innovative according to patent office standards"?
As far as I can tell, they've simply learned the tricks of the trade. For decades, "intellectual property" allowed us to have the best of both worlds: cheap labor from China and nevertheless preventing them from making cheap knock-offs and importing those back into our territories (they could sell them over there, but nobody cared about that since nobody had any money so there was no real profit to be made anyway).
Now they are starting to beat us at our own idiotic game. And still some people think they have the moral high ground and yell "but they steal everything from us, this cannot be". Wake up.
Re:Probably Stolen (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you honestly think that the Chinese for some reason are inherently more stupid than us Westerners and cannot come up with anything innovative? Especially "innovative according to patent office standards"?
Stupid, no, but cultural differences do seem to have an effect on innovation. Cultures do change though, and the bar on 'innovation' is pretty low, especially in the software patent world. China will be able to hold their own in no time.
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Hold their own? Considering China's population and the rate their education is progressing, they can do far more than "hold their own".
It's not hard to forsee a future (20 years? - the next generation or two) where China surpasses US as the technology leader.
The current draconian IP protection ways US is currently taking will definitely bite them back really hard in future.
It is simply a matter of time.
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My source is a book I read (portions of) on the request of one of my professors. Search for, I think, "chinese international trade" on amazon and you're likely to find plenty of source material. I can give it a look later if it's that big a deal.
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Yes, I think they are not as capable. (I'm Chinese, so the rest of you can drop the racism accusations.) There are some cultural elements that cause this, but Chinese people are resourceful, and plenty of them are filing patents on this side of the Pacific, so there is no reason to think that the folks on the home front are not growing in capability. It is not a bi-level state. It is a continuum, and as a whole, Chinese people will catch up quickly and surpass the US.
It is also not a single linear conti
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China has a requirement that whenever the state purchases technology from a foreign interest, all "IP" for enabling technologies and know-how must be transferred as well.
That's sounds like good use for public money. Does anyone know if our governments (EU/US) have similar requirement ?
It seems to me that China, as corrupt and authoritarian as it may be, is taking quite a lot of step to improve China and not just selling its population to the lowest bidder. We have had several similar-ish requirements when we tried to sell software in China. By contrast, we were selling in the Middle East aswell, and there were no similar constraints.
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Because these patents come with a side of sticky rice, its totally different.
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Nor is China. At least, not the axis of evil part. Strictly speaking, I'm not even sure they've been communist for quite a while either.