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China Announces Punishments For Intellectual-Property Theft (bloomberg.com)
China has announced an array of punishments that could restrict companies' access to borrowing and state-funding support over intellectual-property theft. The news comes after the G20 Summit in Argentina, where the Trump Administration agreed to hold off on tariff action for at least 90 days as they negotiate to resolve specific U.S. complaints. Bloomberg reports: China set out a total of 38 different punishments to be applied to IP violations, starting this month. The document, dated Nov. 21, was released Tuesday by the National Development and Reform Commission and signed by various government bodies, including the central bank and supreme court. China says violators would be banned from issuing bonds or other financing tools, and participating in government procurement. They would also be restricted from accessing government financial support, foreign trade, registering companies, auctioning land or trading properties. In addition, violators will be recorded on a list, and financial institutions will refer to that when lending or granting access to foreign exchange. Names will be posted on a government website. "This is an unprecedented regulation on IP violation in terms of the scope of the ministries and severity of the punishment," said Xu Xinming, a researcher at the Center for Intellectual Property Studies at China University of Political Science and Law. The newly announced punishments are "a security net of IP protection" targeting repeat offenders and other individuals who aren't in compliance with the law, he said.
Here's hoping the IP non-sense will end soon. We're all just wasting time and resources fighting a losing battle otherwise.
Not holding my breath, you can try to convince us all day long that creating IP is a cost free exercise but it isn't. So instead of pontificating about how IP rights are the work of Satan and information yearns to be free, can you come up with any concrete proposals for a mechanism by which people can recoup the money they sank into IP creation? Something besides donations and collecting the imaginary goodwill dollars they get from all the people pirating their work? ... because at some point in some way, in a world where you are completely free to profit off of anybody else's IP without compensating them for it, the IP creator still has to pay the bills for it to be worthwhile for him/her to bother.
Your grandma may have told you: be careful what you wish for.
1. If the claim of Chinese intellectual property violation is not exaggerated and that it will be fixed soon, then that would give American companies more incentives to do more research and development in China, tapping low cost engineers and other college graduates, instead of hiring expensive U.S. engineers.
2. China already files more patents than any other countries. The natural trend would be that there will be more patent trolls suing everyone including American companies, just like those opening up offices in East Texas.
3. once China enforce harder, their hi-tech industry will only become more competitive.
Eventually what happened was that, as China’s domestic copyright industries found themselves competing with cheap knock-offs of foreign goods, they pressed the Chinese government to fortify the IP enforcement process on its own. (To put this in perspective, this is also what happened a century earlier in the US, which until 1890 failed to protect foreign works, and then waited yet another century before joining the major international copyright treaty.)
Dude... I'm not sure if I count in your definition as anti-Trump. I am against any person who believes they belong in that office... especially the ones who try really hard to get there.
Let's take the commitment made by China as with most of the other "commitments" Trump has forced out of China so far.
"We promise to consider doing this...."
"We promise to consider doing that...."
"Now that we've completely collapsed the entire American soy bean market value, we promise to buy some at pennies on the dollar but we don't really need them that badly since we bought out South America's supply and they agreed to plant more."
Let's also consider that my company and its customers are cancelling or placing on "indefinite hold" billions of dollars in American purchases as we look for non-American suppliers because we don't trust the volatility of the American dollar or the American tariff system. So, if we commit to "buying American", we can't be sure that our 5+ year commitments are safe since they can easily inflate by 10-25% at any time due to increased American import costs as well as lack of stability of the dollar. We are also holding off on stateside investments since the dollar could rebound 10% with no hope of recovery at any time. So... put simply... it will probably be 2-3 years before we buy American again and by then we'll have established suppliers outside. If American companies are willing to operate in Euros instead and therefore assuming the fiscal risks themselves, we may reconsider, but this would likely hurt them and then we are worried about the health of the companies we're committing to.
Since Trump came in, the DHS and Treasury has made it particularly difficult to invoice American companies. If we can't sell to the US, we can't buy from the US. This means that we need to be able to rent people and equipment to the US. As a company attempting to invoice a US company, it is required to fill out tax forms that provide information to prove that you're not laundering money. This is because the US doesn't trust their own companies or foreign companies to operate fairly. If you refuse to or are simply unable to fill out these forms, the American company is required to withhold 30% of your payment and pay it to the US government instead. This may sound like no big deal, but to properly fill out these forms requires that you're invoicing at least $25,000 to justify the cost of employing an international tax lawyer to handle the process. So, the solution is to open a shell corporation in the US, then buy bonds in Apple and then take a loan from Apple in Europe... which in turn is money laundering. But it's legal money laundering.
I'd be remiss if I didn't explain that we always had to file these forms in the past as well. It's simply that with the added trade restrictions since Trump took over, it's much worse. The form used to be something you could fill out yourself. Now it requires actual accountants and tax attorneys.
Now, let me approach the specific topic at hand.
IP Theft.
The Chinese have now declared that there are lots of possible punishments for IP theft. This is a big issue.
1) The commitment doesn't define what IP theft means. It doesn't state whether US patents are recognized in the consideration.
2) It doesn't declare how IP theft is identified. Is it something that is reported? Is it something they have to discover themselves?
3) It doesn't specify where the burden of proof lies. Is this a guilty until proven innocent or vise versa environment?
4) It doesn't specify whether IP theft claims can be filed remotely.
5) It doesn't specify whether simply making something similar is actually IP theft
I can go on. It basically says "We will treat IP theft badly" but what's more important is that China recognizes less than 1% of all claims made regarding IP theft as actually being IP theft. It's not like you can just say "China stole my thing". There's been a rough total of 2 big cases ever filed regarding IP the