Chinese gadget maker sues HP and Toshiba Beijing-based gadget maker Aigo is suing HP and Toshiba for patents relating to USB ports. Aigo has filed against HP in a Beijing court and against Toshiba in Xi'an. It has also written to Dell, Samsung and Sony, Global Times reports. The company, which sponsors the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes F1 team, is seeking one million …
On the face of it this seems to be rough justice; the nasty Chinese ripped off loads of our stuff, so now they get a taste of their own medicine - but looking a little deeper this is a startling development.
A market which has developed sufficiently to be worth ripping off, has also ex vi termini become an end-to-end commercial entity in it's own right - where products can be designed, developed and independently brought to market, as opposed to simply mass-manufactured.
This is a credible economic threat to the West, who have traditionally held the view that the Chinese are simply a source of cheap labor where sophisticated products go be manufactured whilst the design, develop and go-to-market capabilities are retained in the West where we can keep an eye on them.
I would see this as a wake-up call to those lulled into a complacent snooze, safe in the sense of their own intellectual superiority, that the Chinese dragon may well be about to truly awaken.
So the patents were granted in China, but are valid worldwide? Let's just wait and see what happens if those patents are tested outside China. What are the odds that a court in, say, the US decides that those patents aren't valid there? At a rough guess you'll find the Chinese being sued in the US and elsewhere and nobody but the patent lawyers will make any money.
When it comes right down to it a patent is only valid when it has been tested in a court. Call me a cynic, but given China's history on IP I would be suspicious of any patent granted in China to a Chinese company. Especially a patent relating to something as common as USB, surely they would have tried to enforce it before now.
"the patents were granted in China, but are valid worldwide"
That situation, as (too-) summarily described, does not exist in Law:
* EITHER correspondings patents were granted in all jurisdictions the world over (so, for each Chinese patent, a corresponding US, European, Australian, etc. patent - you get the gist);
* OR patents were only granted in China, and therefore are not 'valid worldwide' (they are only valid in China).
Moreover, a "valid" patent supposes that its subject-matter is provably demonstrated as new and inventive. It's a big call to claim a patent to be "valid", without it being battle-tested (by a Court, rather than a Patent Examiner).
(that's not taking anything from the Chinese Patent Office, though: in my experience, Chinese Examiners are tough, much more so than US and GB Examiners).
I would welcome further clarification, or a suitable rectification by The Reg.
Perhaps China is moving borders and re-writing history again.
It's like Spring time for Hitler .... "All we want is peace ..... A little piece of India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Korea, Punjab, etc, and all of Taiwan, Tibet, East Turkestan".
Yep China invented everything and discovered everything else - it's true, annything to the contrary will be censored or killed.
I for one welcome our new imperialist overlords .............<wibble>
Yep, that would be about 1600 - 1700 - very advanced for its day...
And absolutely nothing to do with any earlier concepts of rotating wing flight, such as Da Vinci's Air Screw (no sniggering in the back!) done in the 1480's...
China leads the way, just as soon as we get your blueprints and make them better. Is China becoming the new BASF?!
A lot of china people copy gadget and stuff from western and europe country. Now being one of the biggest manufacturer for western products they babble about intellectual property? Well I'll be damned.
You can go to china and order any mobile case you want with custom specification you want for the mobile phone. They are the king of mobile pimp. This is very2 ironic and hilarious.
When they will learn the lesson? I think it's gonna be quite hard. They have their own network site, their own regulation, and they think they are the right one and confuse me out of hell.
The winner... make the history.
WIlliam M. Felix
http://insidelicensing.com
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