At the moment Geely is only developing low end models for developing markets.

It looks like a Chrysler Airflow because it was a copy of the Chrysler Airflow. It is the Toyota AA, the first Toyota production .

If I open a burger chain called “McDougall’s” and erect a giant M outside all the restaurants, that’s an infrigiement on McDonald’s. Essentially, it’s identity theft. To say that intelectual property has less value than a shovel because the original owner still has his property is completely ignorant of the marketing principles required to build a successful brand.

Geely stole Toyota’s logo and added a stroke to it. It’s like stealing someone elses novel and changing a few character names and then calling it your own.

Should we buy chinese cars, looking at morals.
White: Stopping the chinese is stopping free trade! It’s discrimination! It’s what happened to the japanese!
Grey: I support imports, but not from companies who steal.
Black: Supporting china is supporting communism/sweatshops!

Should we buy these chinese cars, from a consumers standpoint?
White: No, crappy laborers + 10,000 parts + 4000 pounds + 200mph = Disaster
Grey: The more competition, the lower the prices.
Black: Yes, go $10,000 dollar ferarri!

Me, i subscribe to the grey area, then the white area.

Good post John.

The forced partnerships in China, instead of being, um, certain death for the world, might just be a way of encouraging the Chinese people to get involved in commerce/entrepreneurship for the future betterment of the Chinese people and everyone else. I am no fan of government force (really, seriously, Im not) but that might be the reason.

I predict that within 20 years time that the Chinese people will surpass the Japanese as our best trading partners/friends similar to our relationship with Australia. The reason I think this is because, like us, the Chinese people think BIG! Got to like a country whose national bird is the building crane.

I wonder if people in Silicon Valley complain about cheap labor and sweatshop conditions and “they are taking or jobs!” when they speak of Dallas Texas. Hummm.

If I take your shovel, you no longer have a shovel to use. If you decide to name your shovel Alfred and I think, cool, I will name my shovel Alfred as well … you still have your shovel. So “stealing” IP is of an entirely different nature than is stealing physical goods.

There is no such thing as an original design for an automobile. They are all derived from that which has gone before. Speaking of which, when GM hired the Chrysler designer who had done the PT Cruiser and asked him to do another one the result was the HHR. Ever notice how much alike those two vehicles look? Ford hired away the prior generation Passat designer and had him do the Five Hundred (soon to be Taurus). Wow, interesting that the Five Hundred looks like a previous generation Passat after too many Super Size Me meals at McD’s. These kinds of efforts don’t give the existing automakers much leg to stand on in complaining about copycat products. Every automaker in the world has a reverse engineering department which takes apart the work of the other guys to find ideas to use.

Apple recently stole the name of it’s telephone product from Cisco (iPhone) and they only recently settled a lawsuit about it. In fact, Apple is trying to corner the market on i______ names when in fact they were late to the game. Apple’s ideas for the mouse and graphical user interface were stolen from Xerox’s PARC research group. Xerox did a terrible job commercializing the ideas and Steve Jobs litterally took their ball and ran with it. Microsoft got worried about Apple and stole the ideas from them. Both groups knocked off much of the work of Digital Research’s early GEM product. Seeing US executives get on their high horse and complain about China’s view of IP is absurd if you know the backstories.

It’s like when little Tom got humuliated by little John, Tom would plea to Dad “Please beat up John and his Dad! I know you are strong!” And yeah, the two Dads are close business partners.

2) When someone profits by breaking IP laws, another one profits by exploiting the system and over-extended the IP laws (such as the RIM case).

3) It has nothing to do with dictatorship or whatever. Look at Russia or some democratically elected South American countries. They are the same.

4) Except that the Chinese actually demonstrated some quality and originality(just like the Japanese), and thus becoming the most feared. “Cheap” is another way of saying “good.” Cheaper for the same quality = better for the same price. The customers/consumers are always correct. If they don’t buy your stuff, it’s your own problem. Try to have an edge that actually have some substance and fire the union workers.

The real question is are the Chinese going to learn from their duplication or just steal from everyone.

But China has a bigger problem — demographics. The dubious success of their one child policy has produced a country that’s rapidly aging. And they don’t have the per capita wealth of Japan to cover the expenses of that aging population. In a country with a long tradition of ancestor worship, a nation of boy children (the girls are getting aborted or sold to the West) who have no siblings or first cousins (with no first cousins once removed coming soon) who are the single descendant of six people (two parents, four grandparents) isn’t exactly a long term viable economic or military threat to the US.

In the 30’s, the United States did a lot of trade with both Japan and Germany. They were just as swell as the Chinese are today.

http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/March-April-2004/argument_atar_marpar04.msp

One has to wonder what kind of MG the result will be, from the Chinese company that plans to build them in Oklahoma. (As Dave Barry used to write: I am NOT making that up!)

At that point Chinese autos will be at least as good as the competition and then will surpass them in no time.

China isn’t thinking globally for the good of the world, China is thinking globally for the good of China.

Besides, why should we trust GM, Chrysler, and Ford to help bring in the Chinese auto industry to the global market when the 2.5 can’t even handle the market they invented for themselves?

Some years ago, I read a very good newspaper column by Kevin Maney, USAToday’s technology columnist, that said, in a nutshell, that the Chinese intellectual property model was the future, not the aberration, and went on to discuss why. In a digital age where the cost of reproduction of information is effectively zero, that is very close to what it should cost after the initial recovery of expenditures. Railing and litigating against the modern version of the printing press introduction is as pointless today as it was in Gutenberg’s time.
Found it:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/maney/2005-05-03-music-piracy-china_x.htm
Here’s a few more I dug up in a quick internet search:
http://samvak.tripod.com/nm047.html
http://www.techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20050504/1041227
http://www.ced.org/docs/report/report_dcc.doc
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/weekinreview/14LOHR.html?ex=1378872000&en=a055d75c7ce7ed04&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/

While this may cut out the “middle man” (who USED to be the manufacturer!) and make things cheaper for the rest of us (and more profitable for Wal-Mart), pretty soon none of us will have jobs that allow us to be consumers of products from ANYBODY. I believe the rush to Globalization comes from the large multi-national corporations preparing for just such an eventuality – the murder of the American Middle Class. Does GM care where their profit comes from, provided it comes? Sure, their own mortality is in question eventually, but GM has never been one for the long view.