Innovative Copycats? MIIT Vice Minister's Remark On Piggybacking of Innovative Copycats

3 articles to go: IP Dragon on its way to its 1,000th article

Adam Smith of World Trademark Review wrote a column about China's Vice Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) Yang Xueshan, who made a controversial remark: that the innovative elements of copycat products should be protected and encouraged. Mr Smith interviewed yours truly:

"Danny Friedmann, an IP rights consultant in China and author of IP Dragon, supports Yang in this, but disagrees with his reported statement that knockoff products should not be labelled as piggybacking on another's intellectual property without proper assessment. "If you base your innovation on existing proprietary technology or design or a brand, it is piggybacking," said Friedmann. "That does not say that the innovation is not of a high standard or not sorely needed. If you steal paint and canvas and then paint a beautiful piece of art, you are both a thief and an artist. Yang wants to stress only the latter.""

Read Adam Smith's column here.

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World Trademark Review: "US crowns China top of the counterfeiters"

Adam Smith of the World Trademark Review wrote an article that put a few of the actual news events into perspective.: The news of the US customs that the People's Republic of China is number one origin of counterfeit goods seized in the US, Chinese ministers that held a meeting (12 January 2009) on the country’s National Intellectual Property Strategy, about which I wrote 'Feasible commitments or Road to nowhere paved with good intententions'.

Mr Smith asked yours truly whether this recent meeting of Chinese ministers will do anything to tackle the huge problem of counterfeiting?

My answer: The Chinese ministers might feel that their hands are tied. On the one hand they want to enforce intellectual property rights, but on the other they do not want to increase unemployment and cause social unrest by putting whole villages out of work that sustain on the manufacturing of counterfeit products. This is a fortiori so, because of the economic downturn.

Well the last sentence was not published, but is relevant I think. Read Mr Smith's World Trademark Review article here.

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