Beijing Regulators Block Sales Of iPhones, Claiming The Design Is Too Close To Chinese Company's Phone
from the live-by-rounded-corners,-die-by-rounded-corners dept
This one was so easy to predict. For the past couple of decades, completely clueless US politicians and bureaucrats (and tech company execs) have been screaming about how China "doesn't respect" our intellectual property. They demanded that China "get more serious" about patents and respecting IP. And for nearly a decade we've been warning those people to be careful what you wish for. Because, now China has massively ramped up its patent system, often by using odd incentives, but rather than helping American companies that demanded it, pretty much every patent lawsuit in China has been about a Chinese company punishing or blocking foreign competition. This is because the Chinese aren't stupid. It's a country that has thrived on protectionism, despite global efforts to "open up trade," and here it realized that the West was handing them the perfect trade barrier: one that let them say they were doing what the West wanted, while giving it the perfect excuse to block out foreign competition.So, while clueless US and European IP bureaucrats celebrated China issuing so many patents, they totally missed that they'd actually given away everything.
And, now you get stories like this: Apple has been banned from selling the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6s in Beijing, because of patent infringement. Regulators found that the design was too similar to the design of a Chinese firm's phone.
Live by rounded corner patents, die by rounded corner patents.Apple Inc. violated the design patents of a Chinese device maker and may have to halt sales of its latest iPhones in Beijing, the city’s intellectual property authority ruled, handing the U.S. company its latest setback in a pivotal market.
The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus infringe on Shenzhen Baili’s patent rights because of similarities to its 100C phone, the Beijing Intellectual Property Office wrote in its decision.
Many are speculating that Apple's recent $1 billion investment in the Chinese Uber clone Didi was in part to help deal with attacks like this. Basically every American company that wants to sell products in China ends up investing in Chinese companies for this kind of purpose. But, once again, just as we've been saying for years, the Chinese, unlike many in the West, absolutely recognize what patents are: a trade barrier, and they must love the fact that the US keeps asking them to build more trade barriers.
Until US patent officials finally understand that patents are not about innovation, but are really about restraints on trade, innovation and competition, we're only going to see more and more stories like this.
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Filed Under: china, foreign competition, iphone, patents, protectionism, rounded corners
Companies: apple, shenzen baili
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As long as the US Patent officials are paid based on the number of the granted patents, they'll keep approving them on an industrial scale.
But payback is a bitch and it's payback time in China now :)
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Live by the Patent, Die by the Patent
Patent trolling works both ways? Who knew!
I hope you enjoy the Asians doing what you taught them how to do.
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american business in a nutshell. always was. always will be. all ways.
hope you don't mind nutshells.
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to change the design to get round it,
Make a special chinese iphone.
OF course theres a limited no of ways you can make a phone
with rectangular glass screen thats usuable and attractive to consumers .
They might get sued by another chinese company .
See how a chinese phone company bought patents from microsoft
cos they want to get acess to the western market.
Patent officials make money by selling patents
even if they are used by trolls or to block
competition.
Don,t expect any change of mind in the near future
from them.
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Re:
I don't like the IP nonsense. But for Apple: no sympathy at all.
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Hoist on Their Own Petard
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Apple forgot about one very important credo when it comes to business: if you're going to continue to slap down foreign competition in your home country (The United States), then don't be surprised when the same thing happens to you when you try to expand into those foreign markets.
Apple got exactly what it deserved. It became a trademark bull in the U.S. marketplace when it comes to smartphones and now it's receiving the same punishment that it has been dishing out. It's about FUCKING time that someone slapped Apple down.
HOORAH TO THE CHINESE!
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For one thing, it was a number of items as a whole that made a iPhone, and Rounded Corners was 1 thing out of many. It also wasn't a Patent, but Trade Dress. 2 complexly different things.
You Apple haters keep repeating the same old B.S. garbage. having zero clue what you're talking about. But you keep on bringing up only Rounded Corners and Patent and you're 100% WRONG!!!!!!!!! Apple did no such thing.
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Re:
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I guess all the criticism has been right
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Oh the bitter taste of irony...
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The Truth on Chinese Business
Companies like the 'Big 3 Auto', industrial machinery, auto components, electronics and more - before you could 'bring a product in to retail', you had to submit all working prototype drawings, released product drawings, sometimes samples, and basically every bit of intellectual bit of property related to what you were selling, before they would even review it for retail consideration. More than once (apparently, after their staff of trained monkeys couldn't rebuild a model from submitted drawings) I had to make a trip, just to show, explain and train them in 'how this works', and how 'it really is the drawings we go by at our factories'.
I knew as early as 1997 that they were building massive government-owned blueprint databases on every single thing we owned, made and sold. Our 'Harvard Management' group kept telling us, 'it's ok, it's just their way', 'they would never undercut us', 'they could never compete'.
Hate to break it to 'Harvard Management', but you've been myopic more than once in history. This is no different, and common sense said this is EXACTLY what they were preparing to do, once they had enough of what we gave them for free. Sure, we don't build 1987 Jeeps anymore - but ask yourself, if China could sell you one for $8,000 would you buy it? Now, if their people think that a new 1987 Jeep for $8,000 trumps a new $50,000 Chevy, where do you think that market is going to shift to? Where did our jobs go? It's right here.
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Re: The Truth on Chinese Business
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Re: The Truth on Chinese Business - The issue with 'The Harvard Business Model'
Ah yes, the ever popular 'The Harvard Business Model', where myopia is taken to new heights as an art form. I take it that management group you dealt with has long been released from the companies they worked for, right?
Matthew A. Sawtell
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Re: Re: The Truth on Chinese Business - The issue with 'The Harvard Business Model'
You're kidding, right?
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it looks around the room and when it quips in response to business, its lower jaw wags up and down in a mechanical fashion. only, this audience isn't laughing. doesn't matter. this show goes on whatever the audience does or doesn't do.
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Who knew...
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