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Chinese Court Rules Microsoft Violated IP Rights
angry tapir writes "A Beijing court has ruled that Microsoft violated a Chinese company's intellectual property rights in a case over fonts used in past Windows operating systems. The Beijing Number One Intermediate People's Court ordered Microsoft to stop selling versions of Windows that use the Chinese fonts, including Windows XP. Microsoft plans to appeal the case. Microsoft originally licensed Zhongyi's intellectual property more than a decade ago for use in the Chinese version of Windows 95, according to Zhongyi. Zhongyi argues that agreement applied only to Windows 95, but that Microsoft continued to use the intellectual property in eight versions of Windows from Windows 98 to Windows XP. Vista and Windows 7 are not involved."
In most places, the would-be victim would then be up on a manslaughter charge, which I think is not the analogy you were shooting for. Maybe try something with cars?
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
Why fight it? It seems like a much cheaper solution would be for Microsoft to pay a fee for each copy of Windows sold in China.
Clearly, Microsoft MUST withdraw WIndows 98, ME, 2000, and XP from the Chinese market, and refund the purchase money paid for said products. This should not cost Microsoft very much; after all, there can't have been more than one legitimate copy of each OS sold in-country. Microsoft would then be well-placed to declare all other copies of the affected products in the PRC illegal, and use the automatic-update feature to download a deactivating code. Microsoft should also apologize profusely to the font-sourcing company for the fact that their fonts would then be completely unused, then sell lots of Windows 7 upgrades. Oh wait, they can't actually sell Windows 7 in China, since they can't afford to pay for it due to the manipulated exchange rate for the Yuan.
It took them over 10 years to acquire enough legit Windows licenses for their company to not be countersued.
Very clever, using a strawman fallacy to disprove something by wrongly claiming the other argument is a strawman. He made the obvious point that China ignores other countries IP but now seems to care about its own. That would be comparable to the US having horrible fiscal responsibility and then caring about other countries fiscal responsibility. They are the same in that they are both hypocritical, get it?
Which is why there is an IP case about Chinese fonts, but illegal copies of Windows 98 to Windows XP being sold on the streets of China for $1 a CD each. If Microsoft were a Chinese company, the Chinese government would crack down on the illegal copies, but since Microsoft is a US company, the Chinese government turns a blind eye on the illegal copies of Windows 98 to Windows XP.
And western owned companies take a similar attitude to human rights. They won't have their people working in sweatshop conditions, as the public outcry would ruin them if legal action didn't first, but they are quite happy to deal with factories in countries further east that are run that way. Governments don't do enough about the issue because it isn't directly affecting their voters and the indirect affect on their economies and lifestyles (at least in the short-to-medium term, certainly on the scale of a political term) through cheaper products is largely positive.
While China has no good case not to be called hypocritical on IP law enforcement and other issues, other nations have no such claim to even handed fairness in all issues either and the Chinese are likely to see (well, those who can see it, pervasive censorship will reduce the number that can) our calling their government hypocritical as, well, hypocritical....