How the world nurtured a Chinese patent monster

China is gradually becoming a world leader in the field of intellectual property. And, ironically, the American companies themselves gave all the cards to their Chinese rivals.

Back in the late 1980s, companies like Apple and Intel, attracted by cheap labor, began actively investing in China, The Conversation says. And as China's economy grew and the well-being of its citizens, the market of this country also became of great interest to Western companies.

However, the policy of the Chinese authorities was very well thought out. They have established a number of requirements for foreign investors wishing to work in China: for example, compulsory partnership with local players and the transfer of all necessary knowledge and technology to them. And foreign companies registering the rights to their intellectual property in China began to receive substantial preferences and benefits from the government of the country.

After China's accession to the World Trade Organization, this attitude to investors began to cause more protests: complaints to the WTO on the barriers established by the Chinese authorities came with an enviable regularity. However, it was thanks to this policy that the Chinese "patent piggy bank" began to be supplemented with valuable intellectual resources, and it gave impetus to the transition of China from a production-based economy to an economy based on innovation.

In some types of technology, China is already ahead of the US and other Western countries. For example, in the field of facial recognition - an industry whose turnover will reach $ 6.5 billion by 2021. In China, automatic video surveillance systems that allow people to identify are already in full use in the financial services, transport, retail and public security sectors. The same technology is used as one of the elements of the unique Chinese system of "social rating", which tracks the behavior of all citizens of the country.

For the sake of justice, recently the Chinese authorities have made a lot of efforts to bring their policy in the field of intellectual property to international standards or, at least, to make it not so provocative. For example, last year a whole set of amendments to the legislation aimed at protecting trade secrets was adopted. However, there are still a lot of cases of violation of intellectual property rights by China; The Chinese authorities' struggle against piracy also causes a lot of criticism.

Recently, China adopted the next five-year plan, according to which this country should become a world leader in science and technology. And China has good reasons for such optimism - it's a lot of patents that migrated to local developers from their American and European counterparts.