How to safeguard intellectual property in China
It is said that if you showed the Chinese a trick,magic would go out of fashion.
safeguard intellectual property in China
April 26th of every year isn’t a day of festivity,or a national holiday,and bears no great consequence in anyones’ calendar,but ask someone who has had their intellectual property in china infringed at the hands of a small factory in a remote Chinese province,thy’d tell you the 26th of april is world IPR day.Its a day to show the world that they will take a stand against people who violate the intellectual property of companies that invest in china,this is because of the fact that it has faced critisism over its lax attitude towards local counterfeiters that account for 70% of the worlds fake produce.
As stated in earlier posts about the concept of OEM,and how manufacturers and assemblers on contract that were hired to produce ‘x’ amount of pieces of a certain product by intellectual property owners based in the US,would often leak schematics and technical white papers tht allowed that same product to be mass produced without the intellectual property owners consent,of course in many cases only OEM,without the original logo and seal(which many would consider not-so-bad).But the damage is done,those Oem pieces will be sold to local traders and then exported around the world at half the price, unconsciously taking a piece of the pie of the original IP owner and infringing his rights. This may seem like a subtle steal,because it not a “fake” or a” rip off”,its not even a mimic of the real thing.
Many big corporations that turn to china to source labour and production are bound by international copyright and trademark laws and own the patents in their home country, and as part of trade agreements between china and any other country,or violations are a fundamental part of the WTO process.
Getting into legalities over IPR issues,is a long drawn process,heres a few things to prevent infringement
-When providing system software for testing stage of hardware prototype that is being manufactured,use better protection of system source code
-Fulll proof non disclosure notarized agreements need to be compiled,which safeguards against employees working with the product,preventing them from disclosing trade secrets to competitors.
-Sourcing production of only 75% of final product.try to source only labour intensive stages,and then assemble the rest of the product in the native country
-Submit design and product visuals to customs commission department,so that the infringed product can be banned before export.
– Seek local legal counsel to Register with local Chinese patent and trademarks department before submitting plans to local sourcer
With a few these precautions we might be able to inhibit the duplication of our technology but in some cases detection might be inevitable,depending in what product the infringed technology is used in,when and where that said product is acatully exported, and the actual time when it appears in the trading market.