ARM China CEO launched a new company using seized IP

[Kisai]

 

Summary

ARM China CEO launched a new company using seized IP

 

Quotes

Quote

 

The onetime CEO of ARM China, Allen Wu, has reportedly seized control of ARM’s Chinese business venture, ARM China. Mr. Wu is accused of attempting to launch his own company, Alphatecture, by leveraging his position at ARM China to do so. Companies were reportedly offered discounts on ARM China products if they would invest in Alphatecture. Investors and ARM agreed to oust Wu for this behavior in a board vote, 7-1, but Wu still possessed the seal of the company, which makes him its legal representative as far as Chinese law is concerned.

 

Wu hired security to keep ARM employees from entering ARM China, fired employees who did not wish him to take over the company, and has sued ARM China to declare his own dismissal as CEO illegal. This means Allen Wu (person) is suing Allen Wu (ARM China). As Devin Patel reports, ARM has responded by refusing to transfer any IP from its new products. The newest CPU core ARM China has access to is the Cortex-A77.

 

My thoughts

 Given how long this conflict has happened, it's only a matter of time before all ARM or Alphatecture products out of China are declared counterfeit and there goes everything from Huawei products to Chinese-brands of cheap SmartTV's and appliances.

 

 

Sources

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/326447-arm-china-seizes-ip-relaunches-as-an-independent-company

For reference of where it started:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/China-tech/How-SoftBank-s-sale-of-Arm-China-sowed-the-seeds-of-discord

[AnonymousGuy]

This is why no one puts their latest tech in China if they can avoid it.  You're 100% going to get ripped off and every company knows this. 

[Mark Kaine]

53 minutes ago, Kisai said:

This means Allen Wu (person) is suing Allen Wu (ARM China)

Hehe. UwU

[Maticks]

China stealing I.P and then setting up a new company.. shocking, never happened before

[WolframaticAlpha]

this is so fucking ridiculous. Almost something that comes out of movies

[Supreme Cutie]

5 hours ago, Kisai said:

Wu still possessed the seal of the company, which makes him its legal representative as far as Chinese law is concerned.

Partially correct. If you can't prove the SEAL is possessed by any illegal way, then he is the legal representative.

And is really hard to prove illegal possession of a seal with no robbery or theft in Chinese law.

(Fun fact: For nearly 5000 years the SEAL is the only symbol of power in China. Many emperors lose their empire by lost the SEAL.)

 

My thoughts:

Any discussion about talking this perfectly "Lawful behavior" as a "bad thing" it will be consider as "Rǔ huá" in their eyes.

So, don't do it with you real identity especially you have business in there or still want travel there.

 

And things like this will keep going, literally nothing can stop it.

[SansVarnic]

-= Moved to General Discussion =-

Not Tech News, but discussion worthy.

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, Supreme Cutie said:

Partially correct. If you can't prove the SEAL is possessed by any illegal way, then he is the legal representative.

And is really hard to prove illegal possession of a seal with no robbery or theft in Chinese law.

(Fun fact: For nearly 5000 years the SEAL is the only symbol of power in China. Many emperors lose their empire by lost the SEAL.)

 

My thoughts:

Any discussion about talking this perfectly "Lawful behavior" as a "bad thing" it will be consider as "Rǔ huá" in their eyes.

So, don't do it with you real identity especially you have business in there or still want travel there.

 

And things like this will keep going, literally nothing can stop it.

Why are you trying to correct an article that isn’t published by this website. The quote is directly from extreme tech.

[12345678]

lol this story still goes on 

 

I'm not a lawyer so I don't understand all of that but I do find pretty funny seeing laws going aganist corporation interest in a ridiculous way

[TetraSky]

I expected nothing less from a China based company. Spin off and copies all around using stolen IPs with the Govt doing nothing substantial about it. And even if they do, it's like trying to kill off the Hydra, cut one head and two more pop up.

Maybe companies will learn from this and not send any of their latest tech there.... Oh who am I kidding, they all want the cheap labor. 

[Amias]

When can we start implementing actual copyright and trademark infringement embargos? Please?

[Kronoton]

On 8/30/2021 at 10:56 PM, Kisai said:

it's only a matter of time before all ARM or Alphatecture products out of China are declared counterfeit and there goes everything from Huawei products to Chinese-brands of cheap SmartTV's and appliances.

 

Well those brands could still get a proper licence (from ARM UK) for stuff they want to export to "the west" but even then you'd end up with a mess as there would be a huge incentive for them to misrepresent the licence status of products or under declare the volumes they ship.

 

Could end in various ways:

- everybody continues acting as if nothing wrong

- Chinese companies setting up different tiers for domestic and export

- the thing that finally breaks the Mongolian camel's back and have everybody else take action

 

Not putting any money on any of these.... 

[wisex]

Ok hot take here, I don't feel bad about these tech companies having their IP stolen or having companies sell their IP's via strong arm tactics or whatever... I'm not going to lose sleep over a company no longer having a monopoly over a certain technological process, and this goes for everything honestly.. Like oh no Chinese companies forced an insulin company to open their IP to the market, woe is me now theres not a monopoly on insulin production in China and they have to compete??... Curving the power of monopoly corporations is a good thing

 

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, wisex said:

Ok hot take here, I don't feel bad about these tech companies having their IP stolen or having companies sell their IP's via strong arm tactics or whatever... I'm not going to lose sleep over a company no longer having a monopoly over a certain technological process, and this goes for everything honestly.. Like oh no Chinese companies forced an insulin company to open their IP to the market, woe is me now theres not a monopoly on insulin production in China and they have to compete??... Curving the power of monopoly corporations is a good thing

 

In some cases, IP just needs to go away, particularly when it involves medication and medical devices. However when it comes to certain classes of products where safety/durability is concerned, counterfeits don't help.

 

I'll give you two examples.

 

Counterfeit jewelry, handbags, and such. I don't really give a care about, until I discovered that the counterfeit stuff might contain cadmium , lead or BPA. And that's just the stuff that is being passed off as legit by being re-branded as something else domestically and found at Walmart. 

 

So there are "fake" products that are passed off might contain materials that will actually give you cancer if use it. Likewise there are also fake products like fake high-brand cosmetics that will literately harm you.

 

Then there are fake products that were intended to cause harm, like counterfeit child-safety seats and airbags, where they enter the supply chain somewhere before they end up in the final products. Someone wanted to make a quick buck and just made the lowest-quality thing that could be passed off as the expensive thing.

 

So Trademark IP is intended to protect the name brand from garbage being passed off, and "I am okay with that", if that's all it's used for. However Trademark IP enforcement tends to go so far beyond the pale, that it punishes it's loyal consumers in ways that make the company who owns the IP to be greedy and evil (such as Disney and Warner Bros) and discourages people from wanting to be a consumer of their products.

 

And that's what will happen with ARM here. Any product bearing ARM trademarks out of China will be considered counterfeit unless a license was obtained separately from ARM UK. ARM China no longer has the right to produce anything for export, and as far as the rest of the world is concerned all products built or licensed by ARM China or Alphatecture are counterfeit/unlicensed ARM products.

 

And given the spotty safety record of fake products that have been exported from China to the US or Europe, you definitely don't want some third-party producing ARM-branded chips that explode after 300 hours of use in your hospital ventilators or something. 

 

Remember, fake computer hardware is a thing, and a safety/security risk.