They also “side-step” the capital and years of research required to come up with the products.

Why invest in R&D when you can invest in corporate espionage for a fraction of the cost?

And if your product is so weakly innovative that a picture of the circuity or some power point slides basically give away significant trade secrets, then your product probably sucks.

These charges sound like they're for non-innovation based trade secrets, whatever those may be.

Handset manufactures probably don't care since they're sourcing from others. Perhaps Samsung (Exynos) being the exception, but they're Korean. Apple bought Intel's 5G division.

The only chip company that I could imagine cares is Qualcomm.

This one sentence summarized everything.

The US doesn't actually have any vendor for most of this kind of equipment, the competitors here are either European or Chinese.

It’s like how the music industry kept saying that people would no longer sing and make songs, because piracy would prevent them from doing so. As if there was no money to be made, and money was the only point of singing. As if piracy ever stopped people from singing for the past 10,000 years.

Well, artists do make money from songs, by having concerts. They are selling the service and the experience of of a live performance. This was the way that it had always been done throughout human history.

Or Apple for example, they don’t make money from selling software, but they make it from selling very expensive hardware, that they force to expire after a few years.

Getting billions invested in anything won't happen without a return. If a company is limited to a short window before everyone can copy means less funding and more valueless throwaway products.

In many industries patents are an innovation blocker. Companies often spend more money fighting patents trolls than they gain form having patents. Patens are increasingly acquired for defensive purpose to defend against patent troll attacks rather than actually protecting any innovation.

I am not against intellectual property protection, but I think how things have developed in the US in particular is excessive and counterproductive.

And now, solar energy just crossed a milestone, at 4 cents per kilowatt hour, making it competitive with other energy sectors.

Everything is derivative.

Even the latest generation of CPU technology pushing faster clock rates and adding more cores. It’s still derivative of the initial idea of the transistor.

You build value by building a moat. You make your business more valuable by making it harder for others to get into, almost like a natural monopoly.

Like consumer automobiles, which require a huge investment in societal knowledge and capability. Only a few countries can mass produce cars at a commercial level. Or commercial airplanes, where only a few companies can really make a profit. Or even Tesla, by changing the paradigm, from internal combustion engines, to fully electric drivetrains.

My initial comment was only to rebut the idea that you can’t do anything without massive amounts of patents and copyrights. Which in itself, has gone too far.

So companies don’t do this, because there is no profit in it? Perhaps, that is the problem with late stage capitalism itself? Everyone wants to become a rent-seeking landlord.

What about a societal need? What about for the survival of the human race?

This is like arguing that humanity can’t muster up the ingenuity to solve something to save the human race, just because there’s no profit in it.

Necessity is the mother of all invention. If there are fewer antibiotics, then maybe this just means that it is not necessary.

Sorry folks! You’re just going to have to take your chances with the Grim Reaper! My bank account can’t be bothered to find a cure for you.

Stealing IP does have an impact on capital allocation.

Yet I don't think the solution to this problem is to abandoned both systems completely. Rather copyright period should be shortened, and patents should cover less and last for a shorter time.

Right now the system is not setup to support innovation and creation but rather to act as cash cow for big corporations.

Put heavy encryption on it. Keep it off the internet. Keep your computers air-gapped.

If you don’t do this, then sorry, this is your fault.

However, if someone else wants to compete with you, then they can just reverse engineer what you did. Any engineer competent enough can figure out the process details, by just working backwards. They don’t even need to bother looking at your source code or blueprints.

Though as used, "innovation" really means "figuring out new things to make money on", which renders your question tautological - "in a world where it's harder to invent new tricks that make money, what incentive is there to invest in inventing new things that make money?".

They are commoditizing their compliments.

Nobody is claiming _all_ ideas business finds / works on should be immediately shared freely with the world. The benefactors of a business are naturally motivated to protect their know-how. But it should be the business' responsibility to protect its secrets, not HN commenters or governments'. If an idea can't be kept secret, then government issues patents, which should be time limited and regional.

Yeah, many of these vendors do improve upon the original products quite a bit so even while initial versions can be shoddy knockoffs, later editions are often times improved compared to the original.

> Its hard not to see a lot of them as sort of a Robin Hood.

They're definitely profiting, and they're doing it partially through lower worker standards and looser laws on pollution. They are acting for profit, not to fix the flaws of Western capitalism.

You said it yourself: later editions are improved often times. Yes, some of this gain is due to lower worker standard, but I highly doubt ATT, VZ, etc. are really maximizing for worker standards, either.

Don't mean to go off topic, but general China bashing isn't productive. Lumping together all China related topics as if it was all the grand project of an evil mastermind is only good in the movies.

AT&T, like most carriers, is perfectly happy to get super cheap and gear from China, at a fraction of the price they'd pay otherwise.

In fact, carriers around the world are the one's pushing to use Huawei.

Second - the US doesn't really have any capabilities in the 5G space, for the most part. It's European companies: Erikson and Nokia that have capabilities. Cisco, Lucent etc. are not even on the radar on this issue.

Given that your position is completely at odds with the reality of the market, you'll have to provide some material evidence of your claim that the US is just up in a fuss over their lack of dominance of 5G, otherwise, they just don't seem true.

Once again, all of this narrative misleads us from the real underlying issue, which is that Huawei and others have been systematically and openly stealing property.

Issue for whom? Most people are perfectly happy with one company learning and mimicking products of another company, if they get cheaper and better versions. This is perfectly natural. If some rich guys feel like China got ahead of them too much too quickly, that's too bad - they should have protected their stuff, not teach Chinese to manufacture it.

The number of people here trying to downplay what's going on is astonishing, I can only imagine they themselves are not legit posters.

I don't know what _exactly_ has been going on with Huawei and other companies, but I understand that the publicized outrage about Huawei and other Chinese companies stealing from America isn't natural. Most people were fine with Chinese advancing and copying, since everybody benefited from cheap labor/products. Until the powerful in the West realized american economy is in bad shape, power balance in the world is shifting and it's time to do something about it. I guess shaping public opinion on China is part of that.

'State espionage' for issues of security is understandable and nobody is screaming about it.

"I understand that the publicized outrage about Huawei and other Chinese companies stealing from America isn't natural"

This is really not true. It's 100% natural to be concerned about the blatant theft of research and IP.

Literally Huawei was rewarding staffers for stuff they'd stolen.

In fact, I'd argue that it's 'unnatural' for people not to be concerned about it.

"Most people were fine with Chinese advancing and copying, since everybody benefited from cheap labor/products. "

No way - that was not 'China stealing IP' - that was China using their competitive advantage: labour, factories, supply chains to add value. This is a good thing and few were complaining other than those who lost jobs. Everyone else was winning.

"Until the powerful in the West realized american economy is in bad shape" ?

The US has the lowest unemployment in 25 years, the lowest unemployment ever for African Americans, stocks are at crazy all-time highs. While nobody will ever say it's rosy, and historical growth is a little low, the US is overall doing just fine.

This is all a distraction: China and Huawei stealing IP and other elements and it's blatantly illegal and a serious transgression of international norms of trade.

Why would any company in the world even allow Huawei staff anywhere near their workers or offices, knowing that they're literally trying to steal whatever they can? The consequences of this are real and will factor into how nations contemplate trading with China.