Tomorrow, Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn will be at a groundbreaking in the Chinese port city of Tianjin, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese dignitaries in attendance. A plant for high tech DSG transmissions is being built there, using technology that is in high demand in China. So high is the demand that joint venture partner FAW has, according to recent media reports, “systematically and repeatedly” stolen designs of important components such as engines and transmissions.
“Rest assured that we will protect our intellectual property with all rigor, also in China,” Winterkorn said in an interview with Germany’s Handelsblatt today. The same paper had broken the delicate story a month ago.
Winterkorn signaled that the secrets are safe in Tianjin. This factory is fully owned by Volkswagen. Companies that assemble cars need a joint venture, companies that make part don’t. “The concerned factories of FAW are all in Changchun,” Winterkorn said. Changchun and Tianjin are 530 miles apart as the plane flies, and Winterkorn intimates that FAW won’t be invited soon.
“We’re looking at this very closely and will examine things on site,” said Winterkorn. “If there are open questions, then we will talk with our partners and most assuredly, we will not tolerate this.”
Of course, there also is an Airbus factory in Tianjin, and Frau Merkel needs China to fix the financial mess in Europe. Political expediency will prevail.
Apple is learning the hard way that the consequences of having its factories in China instead of America are leaked products and widespread design plagiarism. Germany is going to find out that a “promise” doesn’t mean anything unless it’s kept.
But Apple still manages to be successful because their products are hard to duplicate without spending roughly what it costs Apple to manufacture them. Copycats save on R&D, but they cannot match the quality of the finished good and undercut Apple at the same time.
Short release cycles also make it hard for copycats to keep pace. This will be a problem for VW because automotive development cycles are much longer than electronics development cycles.
Huh? Apple has a huge profit margin compared to other consumer electronics companies. Most competitors would be happy to have the same child labor costs while selling to people twice as price sensitive as the Apple faithful. Why do you think Apple is fighting Samsung in court instead of in retail showrooms? The US is Apple’s final battle. Samsung’s Galaxy SIII already has the rest of the world’s aspirational smart phone market.
CJinSD
The Galaxy S3 is a FLASH IN THE PAN.
My uncle bought 2 of them – one for him, one for his wife. The only reason anyone’s talking about it is because:
#1 Google advertises as hard as Apple does
#2 It’s large size makes a tablet unnecessary and it’s bigger than iPhone – for now.
The iPhone 5 is gonna BLOW past the S3 in sales with RECORD numbers just like every single subsequent Apple iPhone (which is good for the shares I hold)
Not to mention that a new Google Android phone is released almost every 2-3 months and it won’t be long before an “EVO”, “DROID” or something else eclipses it.
The S2 had a far better build quality than the S3.
epinions.com/review/samsung-galaxy-s-iii-cell-phone/content_592230518404
to those people who really think Apple is “hurting” those “child laborers”, do me a favor and go LIVE in China’s poor/underdeveloped provinces like I have before you say that. Without the jobs and opportunity Apple has brought to those desolate areas, those very same child workers would be doing FAR WORSE FOR MONEY :stares at you with a conspicuously cut eyelid hoping you’ll get what I’m alluding to”.
Germany is going to find out that a “promise” doesn’t mean anything unless it’s kept.
is it the same vay when fuhrer promised to do his earnest too.
There are 4 firms controlling the economic and social fate of this world.
1. Blackrock Institutional Trust Company N.A.
2. Statestreet Capital
3. Vanguard Group
4. FMR LLC (Fidelity)
These 4 firms control the economic/social fate of the globe. They control either directly or indirectly through interlocking corporate holdings almost every major corporation in the world.
This is a fact.
Go to Yahoo finace, and start looking. It is all right before our eyes.
Who are the individual shareholders of these 4 firms????? How has the past 4 years affected the balance sheets of the individuals behind these firms????
I suspect the cover of the December 1963 edition of Time Magazine (the month following the assasination of JFK) provides a hint of who the overlords are. Here is a link to the cover page form that issue:
http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19631220,00.html
This is the most important question of our generation. Who are the individuals in CONTROL of these 4 firms????
suspeky: You forgot the Carlyle Group and….. wait! There’s a black helicopter hovering over my house and my tin foil cap fell off. Gotta go!
suspect-
Your theory is as sound and workable as the Cadillac V8-6-4. Or wait!…if you know of this ‘conspiracy’ then you must be part of it, or in league with those shadowy groups, or have special information the rest of us aren’t privvy, to! Say, just what is your angle, suspekt? Are you trying to throw us off the trail of those who really pull the strings? Just what is the REAL conspiracy you’re hiding from us?
Ryan Seacrest
“Who are the individual shareholders of these 4 firms????? How has the past 4 years affected the balance sheets of the individuals behind these firms????”
Actually, I personally know the people that are the leaders of two of those companies and know plenty of their employees. Who owns them? You’d be surprised. Pension funds and other institutional investors. In fact, you might be indirectly one of their investors. They’re nice normal people. No conspiracy here. Oh crap, I think I’m late for my trilateral commission meeting. Never can find an available black helicopter when you need one.
Huh? Tinfoil hat alert – tinfoil hat alert. Suspekt curiously left out Goldman/Saks[sic.sarcasm.ick] a far more nefarious player.
Not new: Chinese industries playing fast & loose with Western patents has been a 20+ years has been a serious problem that has been repeatedly ignored by the governments of the West. When I worked in high-tech, one of my best customers was suddenly overwhelmed with service claims for their integrated circuit device testing equipment. Their service engineers discovered bad copies of their gizmos with roughly photocopied service manuals, and absolutely no assistance from US trade negotiators during the latter Clinton & Bush 2.
Chery Automotive once copied a Chevrolet model so closely, they actually submitted a Chevy to their own government for crash tests claiming it was “identical”.
Property rights barely exist in the Peoples Republic of China, as one might reasonably expect given the fact they are Communists!
No, they aren’t. The label may say it, but to equate the Chinese economy or political system with “communism” is sort of like believing Russia is a democracy. It may use the word, but the underlying reality is completely different.
Athoritarian oligarchy, perhaps. Kleptocracy? If it walks like a duck…
The Chinese have been stealing IP before it was labeled as IP. The Brits used to call reverse-engineering “Chinese Engineering”. I’m shocked, deeply shocked that gambling is going on at this establishment.
+2
I did a lot of software work in China in the 1990s. I remember this one bank we sold to demanded the software source code be placed in escrow, a common enough demand in the west in case we went bankrupt. Two years later a company owned by the PLA was selling the exact same code. PRC has no regard for anyone’s IP and it’s getting worse. Lot at the quarter million hackers employed by the PRC.
No country respects intellectual property until it has it. The US had absolutely no respect for European intellectual property in the 1800s. Dickens has a famous quote about scoundrel American publishers ripping off his books.
Often the biggest criminals grow to become the most vocal, offended whiners.
VW is built on blatant rip-offs of Tatra designs, Nazi money and slave labor, and now it wags its finger at China? Ha. Go build your components in Europe under labor and environmental protections if you want IP protection.
Just like “We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas” Apple throwing around bogus except to an idiot/biased/misled jury design patent infringement claims alleging knock-offs of Apple’s knock-offs of Dieter Rams’ Braun designs.
This is a somewhat interesting, related series:
http://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/
Well, if a rectangle with a round corner is an IP, I kinda see the point from the “stealers”.
If you don’t want the Chinese to steal your IP don’t sell the product there and certainly don’t make it there. At this point the cat’s already out of the bag, VW may as well start designing the DSG’s successor.
And with VW’s dependency on the Chinese market for its revenue, the Chinese could admit it bluntly to Winterkorn’s face. He knows that beyond protesting vehemently he isn’t going to do a damn thing about it.
So, if FAW stole VW’s design and the government rules in their favor, what then for VW? Will they break their joint venture? Pull out of China? Not likely. When the push comes to shove, VW will find that they have very little recourse indeed.
So then,I take it everyone is up for a viewing of “Ai Weiwei,Never Sorry”?
Somehow I feel that Volkswagen has more to lose than FAW. Either way, who knows?
Maybe their security is as good as they feel it is.