i have worked in a particular industry & mostly for multinationals and i can tell you that it is customary that when a competitor comes out with a rival/more competitive product, the first thing that happens is to buy the product dismantle/analyse it forensically, compare its design, engineering, materials durability & serviceability with that of one's own and then set the design/engineering/process departments the task to better it but marginally avoiding IP/Patent infringements and I can tell you from experience that more often than not, this process of product development runs very close to the wind.
The years of litigation between Samsung (Korea) & Apple (USA) is a recent high profile case in point and, by the way, neither is Chinese. The Japs were accused of this in the 60s/70s & 80s.
Of course Socialists believe that IP which is not held by labour is simply another form of Capitalist exploitation.
Some here think that it is an infringement of owners' rights when for example a car has to be taken back to the dealer for servicing because by design its electronic system is the manufacturers' IP and as such should not be capable of being accessed by the owner or others and our ACCC is making some progress in remedying that ownership issue purely on competition grounds.
If that were to have blanket legislation, then manufacturers could level charges at Government that they were being compelled to give up their IP to others as is the case in China on both a manufacturing and maintenance levels.
The norm in China is that western corporations have to take on a Chinese controlling partner , usually 51%/49% and the technology transfer is an integral part of that deal.
Let's suppose that you are manufacturing a car with a very complex electronic systems with millions sold and that you refused to give up the necessary IP to enable servicing & manufacture of spare parts should an outside power such as the USA bunged-on full economic sanctions on China and required the Western partner to withdraw from that market?
Twenty years ago I had a Prestige Jap car that had an intermittent dash cluster issue which drove the car into limp mode and turned out all dash lights including speedo. I had it diagnosed by the local Prestige dealer who gave me a quote for $4620. At that time, unlike now, the local tech's generic test equipment did not work on this make/model and when he asked for software access, the dealer said no .
I then took it to a Japanese national who operated at the Gold Coast.
He got on line and downloaded the diagnostic program in Japanese ex Japan, found the original fault wiich was a shorting wire under the back seat (when a passenger sat there it shorted a wire underneath) , he repaired the short removed the cluster & meticulously soldered-in a stronger replacement electronic componenent into the printed circuit which had been damaged by the short and reprogramed the CPU to recognise the upgrade. All this for $176 incl GST & 1 hours labour.
Since then I'm a strong believer in when one buys a product that one should have easy access to the technology to maintain it in a useful fashion and not to be held to randsome by a monopolist regardless what he/it may think is his/its intellectual property
