Automotive Industry Asks EU to Complain to the WTO About Car Part Tariffs and Intellectual Property

WTO's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) made Intellectual property forever inseparable from international trade. 29th March, Raphael Minder and James Mackintosh wrote an interesting article about these aspects in the automotive industry for Financial Times. It is called: 'EU urged to put pressure on China over car parts tariffs'. The Chinese argue that they use a tariff system on car parts becase this will prevent foreign carmakers from importing whole cars as spare parts in order to avoid the higher tariffs on fully constructed vehicles.

This article included the passage:

"Intellectual propety rights have been frequently been trampled in China, with VW suffering the copying of one of its models by a local competitor and a Chinese version of a Rolls-Royce being
exhibited at last year's Shanghai motor show."

So what was the story on this Chinese R-R? At the forum of AutoWeek you can find the shocked reactions of car enthousiasts, see here. The car is made by First Automative Works and is called 紅旗 (Hong2 Qi2) which means Red Flag. It is now in the concept phase and will be available in two years.

About the Chinese characteristics of this R-R look-alike (judge for yourself here) CarDesignNews wrote"...Hong Qi was designed to be their flagship vehicle, thus the treatment of the grill is very important. Shaped like a building with the typical ornate roof tops in China, the grill also sports a red flag graphic that flows into the hood of the car. Read more here.