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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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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 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.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
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).