PRODUCT PIRACY GOES HIGH-TECH

PRODUCT PIRACY GOES HIGH-TECH

Nabbing Know-How in China

It used to be jeans and Adidas. Now, though, China is becoming adept at stealing much more technologically advanced products -- like passenger jets and magnetic railway systems. Is this the beginning of an economy based on thievery?
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Never before have the Chinese robbed the West of so much and such sensitive merchandise. Fully 70 percent of all illegal copycat products come from Asia, and most of that comes from China, in what has mushroomed into a $300 billion market. And the issue is no longer just a pair of poorly copied Adidas running shoes or a plastic version of a Gucci watch. More recently, the Chinese and others have taken to pirating expensive, high-tech knowledge, allowing them to duplicate entire machines and systems.

Some companies discover copies of their own equipment at trade shows, copies that are sometimes almost identical with the original product, down to the very last solder joint and paint color. Others, on the other hand, suffer because the fakes are of such poor quality that they threaten to ruin the real brand's reputation.

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,402464,00.html