maybe sub-categorically different, but not completely different.

If I steal your journal, you lose a key property of it -- its privacy. If your journaling your life as a thief, you could lose your freedom, if you're journaling your life as a spy, you may die. But sure, you haven't lost your ability to use your journal!

More importantly, if you have spent your time, effort, and savings do develop a new valuable process, and I steal it, sure you can still use it, but you LOSE the ability to use all of the profits that MY company now gains by selling products made of that same process. You lose your market advantage, you lose sales, you lose income.

I watched this happen with a small high-performance engine producer who had their engines made in Taiwanese factory. They saw some identical models that were basically being made by their factory & sold out the back door. They called their factory and they stopped the sales. But the competitor now had a large enough bankroll to hire another factory to make similar designs. AAANND now, they have a half-priced competitor, much lower quality, but similar specs, and they can do less R&D.

So, NO, your justifications that 'they can still use the thing that they had/have' are, to put it bluntly, merely bullshit justification for theft.

And it seems that you just said it was OK to take and publish your code under my name? Care to publish your IP addr and credentials so we can freely access your journals and code to publish for ourselves (presuming that you produce something of value)?

> quality variability cuts both ways yes, virtually every manufacturer has an occasional problem. The good ones have fewer, address them proactively, and don't wait to be forced by the govt regulators. Hope your Chinese guys are the former, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Happy that your tire guys pass DOT and some FAA certs on their products; that is indeed a good sign. Still doesn't justify IP theft tho.

If your business can be copied by the people who actually make your products, you have no barriers to competition, and thats a terrible business.

For the reverse-engineering, you must first purchase some units, then produce your own accurate measurements & drawings, then find a manufacturer or setup your own factory, and then pay for tooling, all BEFORE you make unit #1. This is far more complex & costly than "simply purchasing one".

For the thieves, all of those expenses had already been paid by the original designer. They merely bought their units at the marginal cost of production.

This eliminated the startup cost for the competitor's business. The seed capital and IP investment they would have needed was replaced by the theft. They then bootstrapped the stolen knowledge and new profits into their own production.

And the oritinal company is surviving and outpacing the theiving Chinese competitor, disproving your contention that 'they have no business'.

More generally, there isn't any business where you wouldn't be able to compete if you could buy the finished product out the back door of the factory at the marginal cost of production. If we could buy Apple or Samsung products out the back door of their factory at the marginal cost of production, we could certainly make a lot of profit very fast. Yet I see no viable argument they have no business model.

Seriously, stop trying to justify theft.

What is the engine designers key competitive advantage or advantages? What is their IP?

Foxconn could ship iPhone X's out the back of the factory and sell them itself as "FoxPhone X"s. What stops Foxconn from doing that, that didn't stop the engine designers outsourcers?

What did the engine designers do wrong, that they should have done differently?

Their biz model is pretty good, as evidenced by the fact that they're still going strong despite the theft.

Their IP is primarily the engine designs for high power-weight ratios, reliability, manufacture-ability, etc. They sell to military and high-performance hobbyists.

Foxcon is probably stopped only by the threat of Apple's large legal dept and the likelihood that they'd lose their biggest contract, probably be put out of biz, executives possibly executed for making an international incident/harming the PRC (it's China...).

Basically, compared to a startup who is a small customer of a foundry/machine shop, Apple stops Foxconn with threat of enormous power.

IMO, what this biz should have done differently is found a way to build in US or MX with a more trusted manufacturer.

Or, if they had no choice but China, split the work between multiple unrelated suppliers so that no one supplier has any surplus or ability to create it. e.g., buy the materials at Source A, provide to Source B for with requirement to produce X cast parts, take those cast parts to machine shop w/req to produce X machined parts and ship all bad parts for inspection. Preferably ship each intermediate step to your own agent for inspection and shipping to next step, partly for verification, and partly to prevent supply chain from making knock-offs.

I know one of my Swiss suppliers had some of their material mfg in China just for the Asia market, I expressed skepticism, and they said, "oh, no, we're making sure they have nothing -- we send them only the pre-made chemicals ready to mix & pour, and their only job is to pour/cure/cut. They have no idea what they are mixing, and it'd be nearly impossible to reverse engineer".

In short, take more serious steps to protect IP.

Though to be fair, I'd lose my freedom or life because of what I did, not because of the thief.

More importantly, if you have spent your time, effort, and savings do develop a new valuable process, and I steal it, sure you can still use it, but you LOSE the ability to use all of the profits that MY company now gains by selling products made of that same process. You lose your market advantage, you lose sales, you lose income.

I'm well aware of the cost, though it's unclear whether society is strictly worse off. I imagine a lot of IP theft is Pareto superior - that shouldn't affect the calculus of whether or not we prosecute it, and I'm simply arguing about what could be.

So, NO, your justifications that 'they can still use the thing that they had/have' are, to put it bluntly, merely bullshit justification for theft.

Under my system, it wouldn't be theft. It'd be business as usual. It might even be better than the current status quo that asks rights holders to perform a lot of work to get their rights catalogued but doesn't do a ton for rights holders when their work is infringed upon. How much does a patent cost? Too much. How much does it cost to get an injunction at the WTO? If you have to ask, you can't afford it.

And it seems that you just said it was OK to take and publish your code under my name? Care to publish your IP addr and credentials so we can freely access your journals and code to publish for ourselves (presuming that you produce something of value)

If turn about is fair play. You can publish my code under your name if you permit others to do the same.

The status quo is that IP laws exist and there are mechanisms to enforce it - those mechanism seem underutilized. If I had any authority in the United State or the WTO, I'd CHIMP OUT at what China's doing. Especially if I were in America and controlled a police force, I'd immediately start rattling the sabers. I'd arrest every Chinese person in America with affiliations to the Communist Party and I'd take the passport of every Chinese student (though I'd probably offer them U.S citizenship if they renounced their Chinese citizenship and really do a brain drain). I'd put the communist party affiliated people in bad conditions and use not-quite-tortue to force concessions out of China all while pounding them with an unrelenting cyber attack, very aggressive maneuvers in the South Chinese sea, and construction an iron dome of missile defense systems in every US aligned nation in Southeast Asia. What their doing is nothing short of economic acts of war and I would respond in kind.

Open source is great, but your original argument would say that it's OK not only for me to copy and republish your works, but also to close-source it under my name.

It'd also be OK for me to take your journal, edit it a bit, and publish it. Then you might die because of my editing rather than your actions.

No question, IP rights as constructed are often abused. We might also note that SpaceX is not using patents, but trade secrets because of this. And just because it's not patented, doesn't mean that Elon would not be justifiably pissed if the secrets got stolen.

Stealing is still stealing, and we need to understand that just because part of the bundle of rights to some IP still remain behind (e.g., the original copy remains), that something valuable hasn't been stolen.