Developing Countries Stealing Intellectual Property from Developed Ones

Today almost every company owns intellectual property. It could be in form of photos, designs, technological methods, product components, logos, brand names, consumers’ profiles, etc. Usually it relates with unique and innovative creations of the mind (David Ho). The variety of intellectual property is broad and covers many things. Along with such common types of intellectual properties as patents, trademarks and copyrights there is another one, which is comparatively unusual and hardly determined – trade secret. Unfortunately, nowadays cases of intellectual property thefts are not rare. Although, most of developed countries have made great efforts to improve their intellectual property protection policy; however, sometimes it has no ample effect. As for emerging economies the problem of the intellectual property violation is even worse. The history of the related legislation in developing countries is very short; moreover, in some cases it is beneficial for such countries to sustain poor intellectual property legislation in order to steal this kind of property from developed countries with impunity. Such cases raise the problem of intellectual property (IP) violation to the political level. In this work we considered one of such cases that has occurred between Chinese and US companies and caused not only great losses for suffered from the theft US company, but also provoked some political disputes between these countries.

Theoretical Background

Concept of Trade Secret

The definition of trade secret varies by jurisdiction. According to World Intellectual Property Organization (2013), broadly speaking, it is any confidential business information which provides an enterprise a competitive edge. The Uniform Trade Secret Act (19...

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... rights of foreign businesses are not being protected. The inability to rely on the rule of law is creating a risk for U.S. businesses operating in China.’

This case has attracted so many attentions because it highlights the risks of US companies doing business in a country with level of IPP legislation which is much lower than global standards. While two countries have a great opportunity to successfully work together such regulation drawbacks create significant obstacles for this work, especially in cases when the potential risks are as high as the rewards. In this way, Chinese government has a chance to show their attitude to IP theft by real actions not just words. And if China’s leaders respond by taking appropriate actions to address this and other intellectual property cases, it would certainly signal the positive prospects for U.S.-China future cooperation.