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washington [US]Feb. 27 (ANI): The US and EU say China is using its courts and patent teams to undermine foreign intellectual property and help Chinese companies, especially in technology, pharmaceuticals and rare earths, amid growing conflict with the US mining sector officials, the Wall Street Journal reports.
China relies on a range of means to steal technology from American companies. In 2018, The Wall Street Journal cited examples of Beijing’s plans to steal technology from other countries. DuPont suspected its erstwhile partners in China were gaining access to its valuable chemical know-how and spent more than a year in arbitration trying to stop it. Then came 20 investigators from China’s antitrust department.
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For four days in December, they prowled DuPont’s Shanghai office, asking for passwords to the company’s global research network, the people said. Investigators printed documents, confiscated computers and intimidated employees, and accompanied some to the bathroom.
To tighten its grip on American technology, China is now using the legal system.
A US manufacturer of X-ray equipment owns a decade-old patent that has been invalidated by a Chinese legal team. A Spanish mobile antenna designer lost a similar case in a Shanghai court. Another Chinese court has ruled that a Japanese conglomerate violated antitrust laws by refusing to license its technology to a Chinese competitor, The Wall Street Journal reported.
At China’s 20th National Congress in October 2022, President Xi Jinping won a third term and pledged to help China become a global innovator and help it prosper further.
“We will increase investment in science and technology through various channels and strengthen legal protection of intellectual property rights to establish a basic system for all-round innovation,” he told Chinese lawmakers.
The fight over China’s access to technology has been going on for years. Counterfeit products and lookalike logos are ubiquitous in China. More recently, Beijing has attempted to crack down on domestic companies that infringe on the intellectual property rights of some foreign companies. In July, luxury shoemaker Manolo Blahnik said it had won a long-running trademark dispute with a Chinese businessman accused of improperly selling shoes under similar names.
However, officials in the United States and the European Union, as well as executives at some Western companies, say Beijing is taking the opposite path in some industries. China’s State Administration for Market Regulation, which oversees all intellectual property matters, and the Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The conflict is at the heart of a growing competition for technological and economic superiority between the United States and China. The United States has imposed restrictions on chip-related exports to China. Beijing accuses the United States of politicizing science and technology in an attempt to protect U.S. leadership in those fields.
In December, the EU sued China at the World Trade Organization on behalf of Swedish telecommunications equipment maker Ericsson AB and others, complaining that China prevents EU companies from filing lawsuits in courts outside China to protect their patents. The EU called China’s policy “extremely disruptive,” saying Chinese companies’ request for intervention “was aimed at putting pressure on patent holders to get European technology cheaper.”
Canada, Japan and the United States have asked to join an initial version of Europe’s complaint, which the EU says could now take about 18 months to decide, The Wall Street Journal reported. (Arnie)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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