News & Analysis
Will China bury its bad IP past?
Junko Yoshida
9/28/2012 6:51 PM EDT
BEIJING – China is big. China is not homogeneous. It has a poor record of protecting intellectual property. But it also has plenty of government funding at the central, provincial and municipal levels to go along with a massive domestic market for new technologies and products.
Add up the pluses and minuses and the Chinese market is a mixed bag.
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So far, only a few Western companies and universities have managed to navigate China’s IP minefield to form successful partnerships and grab market share. “China is complicated,” Dongmin Chen, dean in Peking University’s (PKU) School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, noted during a recent interview with EE Times.
That’s where Chen enters the picture.
Dongmin Chen in his Peking University office.
Chen, who also directs the university’s office of science and technology development, is the force behind new initiative called “Open Innovation Platform.” The idea is to match up “Chinese [venture capital] that can’t find projects” with “universities or startup IPs [Western or Chinese] that can’t find capital,” explained Chen, a former serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur who also headed Harvard’s Quantum Device Physics Lab for 15 years.
If successful, the initiative could have far-reaching implications for China’s high-tech sector, where companies, universities and government agencies seeking more technology transfers from the West have been stymied by China’s weak record on IP protection.
Chen is putting PKU’s and his professional reputation on the line in confronting the IP issue. His goal is to use the open platform initiative to demonstrate China’s commitment to IP rights.
During a recent forum here, Chen openly disagreed with an official of China’s Ministry of Science and Technology who asserted that “borrowed, digested and reinvented innovation” based on foreign technologies is a legitimate option for China. Chen replied that such an option “is viewed as infringement of [IP rights] in other countries.”
Chen knows IP protection is one of China’s biggest shortcomings. The Open Innovation Platform specifically addressed that reality, and China hopes it will eventually encourage technology transfer to China based on international agreements.
Next: Matchmaking
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goafrit
9/28/2012 5:24 PM EDT
Good move. IP = wealth and it is time everyone understands that.
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Bert22306
9/29/2012 5:52 PM EDT
Very interesting. With all the Chinese nationals attending and teaching in universities in the West, including in the most prestigious and competitive ones, one almost wonders how come there aren't more outspoken ones like Prof. Chen.
It will be fascinating to see how this evolves. I have to believe that IP issues certainly, but a whole host of other apparent disconnects between our ways of thinking, can't help but come closer together in time. Especially since universtities in the US and other western countries continue to seek, very actively, Chinese and other foreign students and faculty.
Do a web search on the demographic makeup of entering Freshmen in Ivy League and any other prestigious universities, and you can't help but see this trend. I can't help but believe this will bear fruit eventually.
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EREBUS
9/30/2012 5:21 PM EDT
Eventually the chinese will discover that when you do not respect other peoples IP, then they will not respect yours. When China reaches a point where they can truely develop new IP, they will face the dilema. To produce products with the IP will jeopardize their control. Yet, failing to profit from their IP will remove the profit and technical advantage they may have created. In short, they will be damned if they do and damned if they don't.
Welcome to the new open society.
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resistion
9/30/2012 8:26 PM EDT
Well it's a matter of realizing you can't have your cake and eat it too.
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Daniel Payne
10/1/2012 11:10 AM EDT
What great irony, this professor coins a phrase "Open Innovation Platform" that is already a registered Trademark of TSMC. Next time do a little search on Google before re-using a well-known term in the semiconductor industry. http://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/services/oip.htm
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junko.yoshida
10/1/2012 11:21 AM EDT
Ouch. Not good.
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chipmonk
10/1/2012 11:15 AM EDT
For the last 20 years the West has been committing slow suicide ( much like being hooked on dope ) by dealing with China, training its Scientists / Engineers and transferring technology for free. Like some human "Ibola virus" China is devouring the West alive. The only people still advocating free trade with China or defending its " grand theft - IP " are the Wall St. 1 % ers who have profited by deliberately giving away US competitiveness to China and the pols, media hacks and shoddy academics they have rented to defend their looting of America among the masses who are still brain washed with 'free' trade.
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microe
10/2/2012 5:06 PM EDT
Look at how the prices will skyrocket without made in China. Look at how much more pollution you will suffer without made in China. Chinese are suffering the pollution, making money just enough to make a living. YOU, while enjoying the inexpensive products they produced (but cannot afford to use), accuse them of virus. what a person you are??!!
When you can use free trade to explore others, promote it, even through wars; when other people get out of poverty through free trade, you want to ban it. this is not selfish but evil
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Kapylan_Pallo
10/19/2012 3:16 PM EDT
Free trade should require a mutual understanding of what one person owns and is receiving value for.
The situation here is a lack of respect for this process. If China would respect the IP rights of partners there could be free trade. When someone outright steals IP as Chinese companies have done many times over at all levels (Huawei-Cisco) then there can be no "fair trade". It is then time to write a set of rules and stick to them. Our US Government is too deeply in debt and does not have the courage to take a stand, but private enterprise should lead the way. In fact market economics will dictate that either China changes, or corporate trade policy changes.
If you are complaining about the standard of living in China, you should direct complaints to Chinese government bureaucrats who live quite well relatively among the "huddled masses" there.
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junko.yoshida
10/1/2012 11:25 AM EDT
One thing I would like to ask our readers is the following:
If funding is available in China -- either on federal, provincial or municipal levels, wouldn't you like to pitch your project to China, get the capital and see if your technology/product may take off in China?
If yes, then who do you talk to in China? How do you go about it?
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ruserious
10/1/2012 12:06 PM EDT
Junko, I have personal experience in this area. The process I've seen used is to partner with a Chinese businessman/engineer here in the U.S. who has "connections" back in China.
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junko.yoshida
10/1/2012 12:53 PM EDT
Yes, I recognize that's how things are usually done. As long as you have a Chinese businessman that you trust, and that person has a "good connection" back home, that's probably the way to go.
Did you get the funding you were looking for?
Can that model scale?
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ruserious
10/1/2012 7:15 PM EDT
We did get the funding, but in the end the folks we worked with were not entirely trustworthy.
That "connections" model can scale, with certain local governments in China promising lots of free perks for setting up shop in their towns.
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junko.yoshida
10/2/2012 3:18 PM EDT
If you want to know more about Dongmin Chen, don't forget to read the following blog, in which I identify Prof. Chen as one of China's daredevils.
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4397467/Yoshida-in-China--Cultural-rev-survivors-leap-forward
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