Chinese President Vows To Boost Intellectual Property Protection (afr.com)

hackingbear writes: In the opening of China's first import-themed trade fair, President Xi Jinping promised tougher penalties for intellectual property theft, a key concern of the Trump administration, in front of leaders and executives from 3,600 companies from more than 170 countries. China has been steadily advancing intellectual property protection over the years. In addition to filing twice as many patents as the U.S. in 2017, up nearly 14 folds from 2001, it is also increasingly being selected as a key venue for patent litigation by non-Chinese companies, as litigants feel they are treated fairly as foreign plaintiffs won the majority of their patent cases in 2015 (though that likely attracts patent trolls). China's journey from piracy to protection models the journeys of the U.S. which had blatantly violated intellectual properties in building its modern industry.

Comments

Re: #1 thing they need to do

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Hong Kong and work in Mainland China from time to time. This argument is made all the time (that the US has contradictory policies, and China is only doing what everyone else has done).

The major flaw with this argument is that it attempts to draw a moral equivalence over 100+ years of human history. For example, does it make sense to exercise criminal justice today the same way we did in the late 1800s? Most would consider that an absurd question. For some reason with IP people tend to not exercise that train of thought.

Intellectual property was not protected anywhere in the world 100 years ago, when the US and European nations were industrializing. A couple of additional key points that differentiate what China is doing from what the US did:

- Everyone was stealing from each other in the late 1800s as IP wasn't protected and nations were industrializing concurrently (e.g., the UK stole textile technology from the Italians, and the US stole from the UK).

- The US never rewrote history to claim they were the original investors of (most) stolen IP. Google The Chinese have brainwashed the average citizen who now walks around with the audacity to tell the world that they invented high-speed rail after standing on decades of research and development from the Germans and the Japanese (the French had the foresight to stay away).

This "post" / propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone else think this article reads like propaganda? My first thought when I read this is that it might have been written by someone from the Chinese government.

They have a fairly consistent pattern of how they present ideas, including the choice of words used -- anything that China does that's in their favor is their "sovereign right" or "internal affair" and anything that anyone does that's against China's benefit (real or perceived) is "wrong" or "a mistake".

The part that especially got me was the last sentence that basically admits to committing piracy, but defends it in the same breath saying 'Well that's what the US did to build their industry'.

Re:hypocrisy much?

[cerberusss]

This. And to add to that, President Xi Jinping is well known for saying what everybody wants to hear and then turning around and do exactly the opposite. If you're a company and dare say something about it, expect to get all sorts of weird investigations and licenses retracted for vague and made-up reasons.

In this particular area, things are slowly turning around now that Trump is saying something about it, and not budging. At least, that's what economists like Kees de Kort are saying. I don't think anybody in The Netherlands is a fan of Trump, but the fact that he points out these Chinese hypocracies is well received.

basically means the war is lost

[gweihir]

For the US mostly. China now thinks they benefit more from IP protections than from not having them and that simply means they produce more value now from their own IP than from things they copy.