Comment by dgfitz
6 months ago
> China is also building a huge war chest of IP patents.
My understanding is that China doesn’t care about abusing patents they don’t own. Is this incorrect? Do they value patents only when they hold them and enforce them?
Asking sincerely.
They don't use those patents internally, they discovered they can block progress in the west by spamming patents on absolutely everything and thus made it one of their strategies. The goal is to grind our industry to a halt and it's starting to work.
Why even bother? We're our own greatest enemy.
In an adversarial conflict the goal isn't for it to be a fair fight.
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Well they usually just ignoring the patents and just copying it. The problem is when state actor, potentially, can fund applications for patents and act as a bad actor in the future. Application costs tens thousands of dollars. I actually came across this a few days ago here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44911423. Prusa, the creator of 3D printers, mentioned that Chinese companies are filing patents on parts he and his team originally released as open source. Just another clear example of how, for some reason, we in the West keep tolerating if not indirectly supporting this kind of behavior.
> Chinese companies are filing patents on parts he and his team originally released as open source
They didn't intentionally or exclusively targeting open source, the "# of patents" are very explicit KPI requirement for tech companies in China. Every team gotta grind patents as much as they can.
>" Just another clear example of how, for some reason, we in the West keep tolerating if not indirectly supporting this kind of behavior."
Live by the sword, die by the sword. It is the West that first turned patents into the weapon for big corps to fuck the rest of the world. Well now they're tasting it themselves
Can't really argue with that. I basically expect similar behavior to patent trolls in Europe and the US. And because of the Western sense of untouchability and the illusion of their own importance, they’ll allow themselves to be at least partially paralyzed by a flood of lawsuits.
This isn’t about protecting knowhow or actually producing anything, but about generating as much legal and financial friction as possible. The difference is that in China it can be semi-state-backed or at least tolerated, so it’s not just a bizarre parasitic business model like in the West but also a geopolitical tactic.
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The monolithic West, comprised of only bad actors, none good. Even the previous poster's example of the open source parts is invalid because the organization was part of the West.
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Whatever China does is what China does. The point is, Europe and the USA care, and patents have leverage in nations under the rule of law.