Legal for Chinese companies to "make and sell your products in China"?  - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2020, 10:37:20 pm
content: I was surfing the net and stumbled across ablog arguing (and this makes sense to me) that simply manufacturing something in China requires that a company gain rights to their IP firstor that its "the normal thing" for Chinese companies to make their own versions to sell, or even use your name to sell it there. Ouch! But this seems as if it would explain some of the knockoff products we see, seemingly getting away with selling products under some other companies brand name. And its the same here.Of course, there must be a sweet spot between costs and protection, also, Id expects costs and fees maybe to be lower there, as here, IP lawyers make huge fees.How can companies not wanting to let this happen go about preventing it?It would seem that lots of companies manufacture there and it seems to me that (many) likely do manage to prevent this.I'd like to hear any peoples experience with this, of any kind. (one way or the other)

author: phil from seattle
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2020, 04:02:31 am
content: I don't see how "gaining" rights to your IP prevents your Chinese manufacturer from stealing you product. With patents, the cost of going after an endless stream of infringers is more than the revenue from all but a small number of high volume products. Legal whack-a-mole. But a far more likely scenario is some company there gets one, reverse engineers it, slaps your banding on it and sells it. With the "blind eye" compliance of penny pinching customers.

author: ebclr
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2020, 04:02:57 am
content: Chin a is a Xerox machine, Impossible to prevent

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2020, 06:00:22 am
content: Quote from: blueskull on December 24, 2020, 05:58:09 amJust knew about this, thanks.

author: Mangozac
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2020, 08:11:17 am
content: Quote from: blueskull on December 24, 2020, 05:58:09 amHow it should be internationally!

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2020, 08:33:10 am
content: what is stopping China to make, copy and sell or use US Military arsenals? and then there's you. whats your product's worth? and what enforcement you have to stop them? ask Trump what they have? and you can ask Jinping what guideline they use to write what is right and what is wrong in their moral conduct book? we can write about anything and call it "the right thing to do". just as there can be always a hack in electronics circuit, there will be always a back door in bureaucracy esp when they intentionally make them.

author: dietert1
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2020, 08:39:01 am
content: See that one, too:https://www.chinalawblog.com/2020/12/its-perfectly-legal-for-your-chinese-manufacturer-to-copy-your-products.htmlRegards, Dieter

author: fcb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2020, 10:57:22 am
content: Is this the reason that CM in China is lower cost? - they make it up on the back-end selling your stuff, brand, etc..??

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2020, 02:09:32 pm
content: What if the manufacturer prices their product out of most customers reach? Is that "satisfying the market"?Quote from: blueskull on December 24, 2020, 05:58:09 am

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2020, 02:21:17 pm
content: You probably meant "arms" or similar.An "arsenal" is where they are kept securely.Quote from: Mechatrommer on December 24, 2020, 08:33:10 am

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2020, 03:55:59 pm
content: There is a situation with MSI digital TV chipssets and SDRplay which I am curious about.It seems a lot like the situation with the FX2LP chips and logic analyzers built out of the reference design.Now the chips (it seems several generations of them now) are being incorporated into SDRs that are being sold as clones of SDRplay and -some of them seem to now be being sold for more than the real ones!?Anyway, I think the use of somebody elses name and software "is wrong". (just personally, not in a legal sense)If the chips were acquired legally, I don't think turning them into an SDR "is wrong", unless you put somebody elses name or software on or in them. People on the chinese web site kechuang.org are turning chips that they can buy into SDRs, and seems they are doing it because its an affordable chipset, which was the MSI's original intent, exactly that. I do think they intend to run sdrplay software on them, though which I think is wrong.

author: JohnnyMalaria
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2020, 05:20:54 pm
content: "Legal for Chinese companies to "make and sell your products in China"?" - yes, if you haven't any IP.I've got a US patent on an invention. It wasn't worth trying to get a Chinese one since the market I'm interested in is the US or other countries where existing products are manufactured by US companies. If a Chinese company wants to create a product based on my US patent, best of luck to them. Indeed, I've reached out to would-be competitors in countries where I have no protection to offer my technical services to help them.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2020, 05:24:36 pm
content: It doesn't matter where you are, you only own your IP to the extent you're able to defend it. Unless you're a huge company with deep pockets and preferably an active lobby, that tends to mean little to none.

author: phil from seattle
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 25, 2020, 05:10:00 am
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on December 24, 2020, 05:24:36 pmPrecisely. The cost of obtaining patents is huge to start with and defending them, even larger. Worse, if you do identify and sue a company that is infringing on your IP, they just disappear and another one pops up elsewhere. Whack-a-mole.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 25, 2020, 08:03:25 am
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on December 24, 2020, 05:24:36 pmYES, and this applies to our sweet West.If you actually have something worth of stealing, any large company, Chinese or not, will do that and fuck you in the ass as the bonus, there's nothing you can do about it except be equally large yourself and waste billions in lawyers every year.Delusional startups lose their money and business trying to "protect" their assets against the giants. For example, misuse of patents (obtaining them thinking about "legal protection") is expensive. (The real use case is obtaining patents because someone expects you to have patents in your "portfolio", for example if you want to sell your company.)But, the fact is, most of the time you don't have anything worth stealing,evenif you have a good market case and a working product. This is also surprisingly hard to grasp to most, including engineers.Simple stand-alone electronic modules or consumer gadgets are the easiest to copy, but that mostly happens with products with very little innovation. Not saying this is always the case, though.Typical "copied by Chinese" products are some crappy hobby modules mostly resembling breakout boards. The reason they are "copied" is the interface (such as pinout). Guess what, the interface isn't legally protected, that would be disastrous. There is almost zero innovation in placing an AVR, a crystal and two decoupling capacitors on a PCB. From the legal side, the question is did they actuallycopythe layout images, or just re-design the trivial circuit. From innovation/moral side, I don't think it makes any difference.

author: ebclr
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 25, 2020, 07:16:07 pm
content: Are you kidding Do china have a fair Court?

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 05:49:26 am
content: do you know in majority of countries afaik... president is above the law? or at least has enough resources to dodge it?

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 09:01:40 am
content: Quote from: cdev on December 24, 2020, 02:21:17 pmIt is not uncommon (particularly by journalists) for "arsenal" to be used to describe all the arms which are available for use by a particular country's military.In answer to Mechatrommer, I would suggest most countries have specific exceptions to the free use of weaponry designs, & this is often carried to extremes.Strangely, in other cases, sometimes with the very same countries, patented weaponry becomes "public domain" by default.There are many thousands more AK47s out there than ever left factories licenced to make them.In the "between wars" period, the large Radio companies of the time tried to harshly enforce their patents.Sadly for them, the "genie was out of the bottle" with thousands of "Radio enthusiasts" worldwide, building "homebrew" versions of everything new they came up with

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 29, 2020, 10:31:36 pm
content: This is the level of effort you would have to go to:https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/15/702643451/episode-900-the-stolen-company