I do agree with Katinka's assessment of the curren...

2007-12-13T15:19:00.000Z

I do agree with Katinka's assessment of the current state of EU-China relations. As David Shambaugh has put it, the 'honeymoon' phase may well be over. Perhaps both sides, to a certain point, underestimated their differences, and only now came to realise it to a full extent. That was most visible on the difficulties experienced with the approval of the last Summit's Joint Declaration. I do believe that Europe had to change its tone in order to gain some concessions from the Chinese. Let's see if that works out.

"because of Chinese red tape, trademark violations...

2007-12-06T03:15:00.000Z

"because of Chinese red tape, trademark violations and unfair subsidies". So, the Chinese steal things, they are bad people because they steal things. Who says that, MPAA and RIAA? That is a funny position, and i guess it is couched in the "you do not respect intellectual property". - As if something immaterial that we cannot either see or touch could be property...

I would rather say that we have a problem with our non-accountability of the patent establishment, not bad people who steal things. That is the elephant in the room no one is willing to talk about, and it has consequences.

What financial and economic risks do we have by intellectual property systems that have long been out of sync with the actual intent of the law. What was the intent? Anyone remember? We also need to remember a distinction in this context. It is the distinction between invention, innovation and incremental change. Over the last 2 decades we have entirely blurred those lines.

The patent system was a social contract, the monopoly right was saying to society that it was economically viable to change the dynamics of fair and free markets, in consideration.. in consideration for a disclosure of something that ultimately advances the cause of science, technology or industry. Today the system is not a social contract in exchange for whatsoever. Go ahead, read _any_ recent granted patent. In practice we have created such a great obfuscation around what we think we are doing and what we think our competitors are doing, that we have mutually assured destruction if anyone ever peel back the layers of the patents to actually sort out who is doing what. That is the elephant.

What if the patents that are being asserted to be stolen or copied or infringed are not actually worth the paper they are printed on, and what if the Chinese using their sovereign rights to actually challenge those patents? Who wins? David Martin, a specialist in assesing patent portfolio values and technology transfers, also an advisor under the Clinton admin., held a speech in Brussels back in 2004 explaining the economic consequence of this and our connections with China: Real economic consequences of the non-accountability of the patent establishment.

In the earliest days, patents where a way for the King to reward his supporters and friends, and often to enrich his own coffers. Today we are back to something like that, though the modern insiders are not the friends of the monarch, but patent lawyers, insurance companies, and other assorted purveyors of overhead draining any small company to its death. They will come out very nicely under this scheme, on both sides of the fence, with the future development as a looser either way. Laura Creighton explained this very well in a speech in Brussels 2003 on the subject of software patents.

If we are not willing to confront the integrity problem, which says that we are incentivised to issue garbage, and the sovereign immunity from accountability that exists in our patent system, then we are just rearranging deck chairs on the titanic.

//steelneck

Comments on Centre for European Reform: China is losing its EU friends

I do agree with Katinka's assessment of the curren...

"because of Chinese red tape, trademark violations...