FBI Conducted a Sting Operation on Huawei at CES

[DrMacintosh]

Was is really disputed that they steal IP? Its not like they almost literally cloned iPhones in the past......

[straight_stewie]

This type of "reverse engineering" is so common that the tech world wouldn't look like it does now without it. (that's not in support of Huawei).

Remember when IBM was going to be the only company making PC's? That lasted just long enough for three angry ex employees of Texas Instruments to find a way to reverse engineer them without violating copyright law.

[mr moose]

 

2 hours ago, straight_stewie said:

This type of "reverse engineering" is so common that the tech world wouldn't look like it does now without it. (that's not in support of Huawei).

Remember when IBM was going to be the only company making PC's? That lasted just long enough for three angry ex employees of Texas Instruments to find a way to reverse engineer them without violating copyright law.

People also mistake the Chinese designs for rippoff's.  There is a wire feed welder that is design by one of the Chinese manufacturers and it is made for cigweld, ozito and hobart,  people see the Chinese version and claim it is a knock off but the truth is it is the original and the others are just re-badged stock designs. 

 

[leadeater]

6 minutes ago, mr moose said:

People also mistake the Chinese designs for rippoff's.  There is a wire feed welder that is design by one of the Chinese manufacturers and it is made for cigweld, ozito and hobart,  people see the Chinese version and claim it is a knock off but the truth is it is the original and the others are just re-badged stock designs. 

That's true for a lot of things, OEM/ODM with re-branding is like the defacto norm. Then you have other things like sum of parts, being that the product you buy is made up of almost completely other companies products. End to end single source design and manufacturing is not exactly common, it's just too costly to specialize in everything.

[Spotty]

On 2/5/2019 at 5:44 AM, Syntaxvgm said:

I think trump has a lot to do with the huawei and ZTE bans, mainly posturing. Though yah, why I'm talking this admin in general not trump in particular. It's a new concept to me, we've never really help them accountable 

 

On 2/5/2019 at 5:45 AM, Syntaxvgm said:

To be clear I'm not saying trump is the cause, just the trump admin is when it started. 

They were banned from infrastructure in Australia and some European countries as well, so I don't think it's explicitly due to the current US administration. I believe it's more of a current climate thing due to recent law changes in China in the past few years that require Chinese based companies to assist in State intelligence gathering, as well as also coinciding with the future rollout of 5G infrastructure where countries actually have the opportunity to say "Don't use XYZ hardware".

[D13H4RD]

32 minutes ago, Spotty said:

They were banned from infrastructure in Australia and some European countries as well, so I don't think it's explicitly due to the current US administration. I believe it's more of a current climate thing due to recent law changes in China in the past few years that require Chinese based companies to assist in State intelligence gathering, as well as also coinciding with the future rollout of 5G infrastructure where countries actually have the opportunity to say "Don't use XYZ hardware".

It's probably a lot to do with the rollout of 5G

 

You bet every big superpower wants influence over that 

[CarlBar]

Question for the patent people out there. How does patenting work in a case like this? Whilst obviously taking apart a study sample like this is a huge no-no i know from stuff i've been reading about the pharmaceuticals industry recently that it's the trade name/s and production processes that are patented there, not the final end product. If a company can find an alternate way of making somthing that doesn't infringe the process patent/s allready in existence they can patent the alternate process and produce the same drug under their own trade name legally.

[Yoinkerman]

A private US company using the FBI to settle business grudges?

 

Ya Huawei is the problem here

[SansVarnic]

3 hours ago, CarlBar said:

Question for the patent people out there. How does patenting work in a case like this? Whilst obviously taking apart a study sample like this is a huge no-no i know from stuff i've been reading about the pharmaceuticals industry recently that it's the trade name/s and production processes that are patented there, not the final end product. If a company can find an alternate way of making somthing that doesn't infringe the process patent/s allready in existence they can patent the alternate process and produce the same drug under their own trade name legally.

I am no patent expert but your example doesnt work well as pharmaceuticals and Electronics are regulated quite differently with patenting. Dont ask me to explain further than this though, sorry.

[79wjd]

33 minutes ago, SansVarnic said:

I am no patent expert but your example doesnt work well as pharmaceuticals and Electronics are regulated quite differently with patenting. Dont ask me to explain further than this though, sorry.

It depends if the patent is on the end product or the process by which the product is created. 

[CarlBar]

6 hours ago, 79wjd said:

It depends if the patent is on the end product or the process by which the product is created. 

 

Obviously and thats somthing i'm not clear on in a case like this. If end products can be patented why don't pharmaceutical companies do that. As far as i'm aware patent law is patent law, it doesn't work differently for different industries so i'd assume that indicaites you can only patent the process of manufacture. Obviously pharma does have the advantage that finding an alternate production method for the same end effect is very much easier, (chemistry is a lot more flexible than most macro scale industrial processes after all).

[79wjd]

7 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

Obviously and thats somthing i'm not clear on in a case like this. If end products can be patented why don't pharmaceutical companies do that. As far as i'm aware patent law is patent law, it doesn't work differently for different industries so i'd assume that indicaites you can only patent the process of manufacture. Obviously pharma does have the advantage that finding an alternate production method for the same end effect is very much easier, (chemistry is a lot more flexible than most macro scale industrial processes after all).

Pharmaceutical companies do patent the drug itself and end up with exclusivity, it's after that exclusivity (or possible invalidation) that generics can be produced.

[Unixsystem]

On 2/6/2019 at 8:41 AM, Yoinkerman said:

A private US company using the FBI to settle business grudges?

 

Ya Huawei is the problem here

Huawei breached a legal contract and infringed on a US company's patent. Who do you suggest should settle the issue? 

[Timhortons]

West is just salty af that China didn't just sit back and cheaply make western products for foreign companies, they started innovating. Korea did the same to Japan.

[Starelementpoke]

On 2/5/2019 at 8:31 PM, BlueThumb said:

I worked in manufacturing for years. I can say from experience that if you're a big company making a tech product in China - you KNOW they are stealing your IP as fast as the can. I've seen advanced equipment knock-offs show up in Chinese markets within a year of a legit product launch. That is, you have them make your new product and within a year it's been cloned and available on the Chinese market. The Chinese Mainland way is is completely ironic because questioning their honesty is a great dishonor to them. But at the same time, they're blatantly dishonest - and hustling you as cultural rule (it's like sport to them). The closest comparison is it's like cheating on a marriage is standard practice as long as long as it's one sided and you're never called out on it by your partner. She knows...but she's supposed to smile and pretend it's not happening...and that makes for a happy marriage.  

Can confirm, Chinese culture is one of a double standard.

[Timhortons]

Just now, Starelementpoke said:

Can confirm, Chinese culture is one of a double standard.

Practically everything was invented by a German, then the British stole it, then Americans stole it, then Japan stole it, then Korea stole it, then China stole it... probably Russia next, then back to the Germans.

[Yoinkerman]

7 hours ago, Waffles13 said:

Huawei breached a legal contract and infringed on a US company's patent. Who do you suggest should settle the issue? 

Civil courts like for everyone else?

[BlueThumb]

The post about the Germans inventing everything is very true from the turn-of-the-century technology up to WW2. However, from the 1960s on up, the "West" has developed most modern technology that is driving the the world's economic growth. The "West" can be defined as Western Europe (including Russia) and North America (U.S. and Canada). Anyway, none of this matters. What matters is the Chinese are an intelligent society and need to start working on their own tech. This is not new to them as the Orient once led most technological breakthroughs. Come on China - step up! 

[thinwalrus]

I guess these news finally make it pretty obvious who took that Razer prototype at CES 2017

[RejZoR]

On 2/11/2019 at 10:30 PM, BlueThumb said:

The post about the Germans inventing everything is very true from the turn-of-the-century technology up to WW2. However, from the 1960s on up, the "West" has developed most modern technology that is driving the the world's economic growth. The "West" can be defined as Western Europe (including Russia) and North America (U.S. and Canada). Anyway, none of this matters. What matters is the Chinese are an intelligent society and need to start working on their own tech. This is not new to them as the Orient once led most technological breakthroughs. Come on China - step up! 

Why invest time and money into R&D when you can just steal the tech?

[danieltien]

On 2/6/2019 at 3:48 PM, CarlBar said:

 

Obviously and thats somthing i'm not clear on in a case like this. If end products can be patented why don't pharmaceutical companies do that. As far as i'm aware patent law is patent law, it doesn't work differently for different industries so i'd assume that indicaites you can only patent the process of manufacture. Obviously pharma does have the advantage that finding an alternate production method for the same end effect is very much easier, (chemistry is a lot more flexible than most macro scale industrial processes after all).

Taking apart or reverse engineering something in and of itself is not illegal--where Huawei is in trouble is that they broke a contract and probably a confidentiality covenant that covered the manner in which they were allowed to examine the sample. They held onto the piece longer than they were allowed to and took it out of the country--the former is a violation of the contract (a civil matter), and the latter is possibly a violation of export control laws and theft of trade secrets (possibly criminal). Since Huawei hasn't produced a product that is potentially infringing, there isn't exactly a patent infringement case here.... yet.

 

As for pharma, patent law for pharma is a specific carve-out field defined by Congress. The drug itself has a marketing exclusivity period stipulated based on the type of drug and when it's filed for--which is separate from the patent period of 20 years. It may take 10-15 years just to get from the discovery or synthesis of the novel drug to the FDA clinical trials phase and approval. Exclusivity gives the firms a bankable term to recoup development costs since most of the patent protection period would have been eaten up by clinical testing and regulatory phases. Large-molecule (hormones, antibodies) drugs are relatively easy to characterize, but crazy difficult to synthesize in a manner that generics could assure exact behaviors, so the hang-up there tends not to be on the patents but in assuring the FDA that the competing product has the same effect profile as the original drug.

 

In short, drugs are protected for their 1) Molecular structure, 2) Method of Manufacture/Synthesis, 3) Method of delivery (e.g., inhaler, autoinjector) 4) Marketing exclusivity.