EU firms wary of China over IP insecurity European companies are hesitant to do business in China because of fears that their intellectual property will not be protected, according to the European Union's Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton. Ashton told a trade and investment fair in China that she was "encouraged" by efforts to improve protections there. "Without …
"European companies are hesitant to do business in China because of fears that their intellectual property will not be protected"
What they mean is: "Obey our laws, which were created to benefit us at your expense, or else we will punish you by refusing to do business with you."
China should call their bluff.
China protect IP?
C'mon, get real.
Cisco has been building their kit in China for years and a couple of years ago, one of the local IT mags ran a cover story about fake Cisco kit being shipped and sold here in the US. Some of it even to the US government.
The fakes looked so real, you had to open them up to see the difference.
So not only do you have an issue with IP, but also with security.
Then there's also product safety.
This isn't FUD, but with enough writing on the wall, in a global, unless you can control your manufacturing source and hold them accountable to the same laws and standards that you would in your home country, you will find that sourcing to a local supplier will be cheaper in the long run.
The FAIL is for the idiots who haven't figured this out after multiple years of issues in China.
Anonymous, for obvious reasons. ;-)
When the first human invented the first axe, I'll bet he didn't try to sell them to his neighbours on the condition that they didn't try to make any more of them.
If he did, he would soon have discovered an axe embedded in his skull...
China is a communist state. I'm not sure of the exact laws there but in Europe, many communist states entirely did away with IP rights. Plans for anything invented were freely available to any other company who wanted to make it. They also completely ignored IP registered in other countries (which is why the made their own versions of the Spectrum, to name just one).
Haven't the greedy corporations realised that if you want cheap labour, expect to pay more in other ways?
We got an email at work today (I work for a publishing/web-dev company) from an offset printing company in China offering very cheap rates. When the boss called me into his office to show me my first response was that it would be false economy; my exact words to him were:
"Yeah - but you do know China doesn't respect copyright, right? What'll happen is, we'll send the book file over there with an order for 5,000 books, and they'll print off 20,000 of them, give us our 5,000, and sell the rest themselves without giving us jack shit."
And yes, I've dealt with Chinese companies who do exactly that. It's why I said that to the boss. So we are one of several Australian SMEs that won't deal with Chinese companies on IPR grounds - while we do buy material, such as ink, toner, etc from them, we don't outsource to them - and I'm not at all surprised to hear that SMEs in Europe are holding back as well.
P2P filesharing is one thing, and we don't worry about it (I've seen a few of our e-books floating around on torrent sites, and ironically those books seem to be the ones that sell the most hardcopies.) But copying and SELLING other peoples' work is not on. Until China realises that, there's going to be any number of businesses who simply won't deal with them.
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