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German Police Raid 51 CeBIT Stands Over Patent Claims
LeCaddie writes "Last week German investigators raided 51 exhibitor stands at CeBIT, the German information technology fair in Hanover, looking for goods suspected of infringing patents. Some 183 police, customs officers, and prosecutors raided the fair on Wednesday and carried off 68 boxes of electronic goods and documents including cellphones, navigation devices, digital picture frames, and flat-screen monitors. Of the 51 companies raided, 24 were Chinese. Most of the patents concerned were related to devices with MP3, MP4, and DVB standard functions for digital audio and video, blank CDs, and DVD copiers, police said." In the US there are no criminal penalties associated with patents, and such a raid could not be conducted, especially in the absence of a court ruling of infringement.
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This is an annual event. Same as CeBIT itself. It is not the fist time, it is not the last time. And frankly as far as some manufacturers are concerned infringing until you get nailed is the way to do business so I do not quite see what does this change. So I will disagree. There WILL be another IT fair in Germany and there will be another bust there.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
I thought software patents were illegal in Europe.
It is not about software patents. It is about embedded devices (hence not "computers") with a specific functionality profile. At least German law enforcement has not yet grasped that a phone can actually have software downloaded into it and so not all functionality is "hardcoded". Also a device can be in violation of "Musterschutz" (something like the "look" part from "look and feel"), by closly following the design of an other device.
Side note: MP3 as a method or as an encoder/decoder is not protected, but the parameter set used is (as far as I understand this). As to the CDs, these were likely counterfit, i.e. claiming a different manufacturer. That is trademark infringement. DVD copier could be classified as "circumvention device" for copy protection shemes, which are illegal in Germany. (I know, I know, lawmakers with no grasp of technology...)
My guess is that this raid will actually result in no or very little prosecution. But the displays have been removed, so the patent holders are satisfied. Unfortunately it will be very difficult to get any compensation for the damage done, even if equipment was seized in error.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
And here in the US we're on our way to needing passports to travel from state to state :-)
I kid, but only a little.
I read another report that said it was about product piracy (fake iPhones etc.). I find that version easier to believe, since AFAIK patents are a purely civil matter across Europe. And you can bet your ass that if it was piracy-related, the same could happen in the US as well. Here in Canada/Vancouver, we had similar raids last summer on some open air markets where police were cracking down on vendors selling fake Prada purses and the like.
the german govenment installed gestapo-2.0
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Europe isn't a country...
Indeed, its more a sort of political soufflé
Yeah, from what I can gather from the various online German news outlets reporting on this the target of the raid was counterfit products, not patent violations. Booths belonging to Chinese companies were selling blatant iPhone ripoffs, like Meizu Technology's "MiniOne", and the police shut them down.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
The United States is a collection of independent "states" with their own independent constitutions, law making bodies, courts, etc... they are then united with other "states" under a unifying constitution which provides for its own organized law-making body, courts, etc...
Now... compare this to EU "countries" which have their own independent constitutions, law making bodies, courts etc... and then are united with other "countries" under a unifying constitution which provides for its own organized law-making body, courts, etc...
Playing my own devil's advocate... Even individuals states in the USA can have their own armies, called "State Defense Forces". Although only half (25) of the states have such an army, they do exist, and all state legislatures have authorized the creation and maintenance of such forces. A final argument might be that unlike EU countries, individual states in the USA do not partake in foreign affairs and do not have foreign delegates. This might be true to an extent, but border-states, such as California and Texas, certainly must deal with some level of foreign affairs.
Hmm... yeah, the EU and the USA are really different. If the USA is a country, than the EU is a country. If Germany is a country, than Pennsylvania is too. I think this is a matter of pride and perception than it is about terminology, or even reality. Finally, a distinction should be drawn against the EU and "Europe", such as there is a distinction between the USA and "North America". One is a country, the other is a continent.
An item is only a 'counterfeit' if it tries to pass itself off as the original. So, if the MiniOne does not have the iPhone name or logo on it, it is not counterfeit. So, I have to ask anyone who has seen this product... Does it say iPhone, or have an Apple logo on it?
The situation is complex. Traditional definitions of country include issuing money and sovereignty (ie no other states have power over what happens in your territory); many EU countries do not have their own currency (and hence monetary politics) and although sovereign countries can 'give away' part of their sovereignty in treaties while still remaining a sovereign country you can make a convincing case that current European decision making *and* judiciary is going beyond that.
:-)
On the other hand: there is no european army or police force; the Iraq war showed convincingly that there is no European foreign policy; european 'law' only becomes law by national legislatures passing national laws that implement European directives; there is *no* european constitution since some members decided not to ratify it (but there are tons of treaties that could be interpreted as forming the constitution); there is no sensible European Parliament; the european equivalent of the 'bill of rights' is the European Convention on Human Rights which is the Council of Europe rather than the EU, which includes Russia and Switserland. Very importantly, EU citizens in the great majority consider themselves national citizens first, and europeans second (or third, after region/city), and the elections that count are national elections, which are generally about national issues.
"Country" is a useful abstraction that has high explanatory power, but it is ultimately a projection of a complicated continuum on a dichotomous variable. Entities like Pennsylvania, Scotland, Liechtenstein, the EU, Kosovo, Taiwan, Hongkong, etc. show that the discussion is a lot more complicated than that.
IMHO, the really interesting question is not whether the EU is a country or not, it is whether we want to delegate more power to
'Brussels' and how we can control such power. The colonies that became the USA went through the same process more than two hundred years ago, and they had an external threat to convince people that a confederation was not enough. Also, the US shows that even a constitution framed by very intelligent people who did their utmost to limit the power of the federal government to an enumerated set can gradually become a much more centralized state without changing its constitution, so without giving the member states and direct say in the matter. This makes me (as an EU citizen) wary of the EU becoming a confederacy or even federal state, as I would be afraid that it will gradually shift to a more centralized state.
Anyway...
You're ignorant (no offense) if you think the quality of Chinese rip-offs comes close to the real products. I've spent the last two years in Asia, in a country where such fake products are plentiful. I bought a "Sony" discman for part of my stay there. It wasn't so bad since I could just take it to some local, hole-in-the-wall electronics shack and they could fix whatever electronic components had failed while I waited (which occurred fairly regularly), but there is no way any product like that would be put-up with by most Americans, with or without access to a cheap electronic repair outlet. I won't argue with you whether or not real, brand-name electronics have been reduced in quality over the past years (I think they have), but in no way do they approach the shoddy quality (both interior and exterior) of the fake stuff, believe me.
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No, actually you got it wrong. It was acknowledged by law enforcement officials that the raid was about patents. From http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/104657:
Auslöser für die Aktion waren den Angaben der Staatsanwaltschaft zufolge Strafanzeigen der Rechteinhaber. Bei der Razzia sei es vorwiegend um Patente für Datenkompressionsverfahren, DVB-Standards und DVDs gegangen, sagte Kriminaloberrat Oliver Stock, der die Aktion koordiniert hatte und sich über einen "erfolgreichen Abschluss" freute.
Bad translation (by me):
According to the public prosecutors office complaints by holders of rights were reason for the action. Law enforcement senior councillor Oliver Stock who coordinated the action and was glad about the "successfull completion" said target of the raid where mainly patents for data compression, DVB standards and DVDs.
There were some initial (wrong) reports that reason for the raid was counterfeiting (iPhone look-a-likes) but these reports were later corrected, see for example http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/104591 (in english).