Do BYD have IPR issues with their technology?
According to this report from the Wall Street Journal, BYD maybe stalling the launch of the BYD E6 and F3DM in Europe and the USA due to a lack of patents for its self developed batteries, any launch in the US market would lead to lawsuits due to the type of lithium powder used in its batteries.
California is an obvious choice for a Chinese high tech company such as BYD who are keen to recruit and keep the best employees and also market its products to a highly receptive young audience who are keen on green technology, and for cash poor California it seems like a perfect match for cash rich Chinese companies to enter the market, especially as traditional investment from inside the USA and also Europe and Japan has all but dried up post 2009. However the potential setbacks for BYD and other Chinese companies entering into the Golden States should be thought over completely before anyone make the big jump across the pond.
California wants to tap Chinese companies to do everything from set up offices and factories to supply public busses and even maybe help build a high-speed train line. In an era of anemic budgets and eroding tax revenues, luring Chinese companies to set up shop is an increasingly attractive option for a number of state and local governments in the U.S.
There’s just one problem: It’s not clear the technologies the Chinese want to bring over are entirely legal.
That is a pressing issue, for example, for Los Angeles, which is trying to woo Chinese businesses to the city after it was stung recently by the departures of Northrop Grumman Corp (to Virginia) and Hilton Worldwide Inc (to Washington, D.C.). To fill the void left by those losses, the city has, among other efforts, been going after cash-rich companies from China that are looking increasingly to venture out in the global marketplace.
Los Angeles’ first deputy mayor – former Wall Street executive Austin Beutner – earlier this year persuaded Chinese battery and auto maker BYD Co. to open its first U.S. headquarters in the city. As part of that effort, the city agreed to stock part of its municipal vehicle fleet with BYD’s all-electric battery car, powered by generally still-unproven advanced lithium-ion battery technology, as a way to help the Shenzhen-based company conduct field tests. The city is also in talks to buy all-electric buses from BYD, which might eventually set up a factory to supply those e-buses to the city.
While all this is great for BYD and Mr. Beutner, who is hoping BYD’s decision to site its U.S. head office in southern California will become a catalyst for other Chinese companies to do the same, what if BYD doesn’t exactly own all the rights to the technology it’s selling?
That question became more pressing when an individual close to BYD told The Wall Street Journal this month that a delay in the planned launch of BYD’s all-electric e6 sedan this year was in part over questions of intellectual property infringement involving the lithium powder BYD uses in its car batteries.
BYD has denied there is any intellectual property problem with its battery technology, and according to the same knowledgeable individual who flagged the problem, BYD appears to have resolved it by finding a legal way to produce or procure the lithium powder. Still, questions over the legality of the company’s technology are bound to persist as the company begins test-marketing the e6 car next year.
“As a city, we are trying to encourage as many businesses as possible to establish operations (in Los Angeles),” Mr. Beutner said in an email message when asked about BYD’s possible intellectual property problem. “We expect all of them will comply with all applicable laws.”
California’s state government has similar concerns. The state is interested in getting Chinese help to build a planned high-speed railway, but may run into opposition from foreign companies such as Germany’s Siemens AG and Japan’s Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. who licensed their high-speed train technology to China with the understanding it would be used exclusively within China. Chinese companies can’t use the technology in products they intend to export, these companies contend, citing technology-transfer contracts they signed with China’s Ministry of Railways.
The railway in question is of course China’s CRH railway system that recently set the world record for the world’s fastest train. The technology was initially bought from Japan but Chinese engineers claimed that they have re-engineered it in such a way that it is a completely new product and bares little resemblance to the older products that Kawasaki Heavy Industries sold to China in teh first place.
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California has an extremely strict IPR protection. Their knowledge-driven economy, dominated by companies like Intel and Google, depend on it.
Just wait and watch BYD double whammied by Panasonic and A123 in the US.
As for China’s bullet train in the US, not a chance.
Please answer my question on the other thread !!!
Yeah, the same stupid Korean company that tried to sue a Taiwanese LCD maker not long ago..Then found out that themselves were the IPR violator and was ordered by the US court to STFU and paid a big fine. Lol. Now, they’re trying to do that shit again with BYD. We’ll see..
“blabla, not a chance.”
Didn’t you say the same thing when Geely bidding for Volvo?
moron..
well said.
Chinese are blatant about stealing and is backed by the state: China is a nation run by goons and thugs.
“China and Intellectual Property
For years, Chinese officials have promised to improve their protection of intellectual property. But the infringement of copyrights, patents and trade secrets has, in many instances, gotten worse. Last week, they made some new promises. While we welcome China’s willingness to utter commitments in this area, we remain skeptical of its ability or desire to protect foreign innovation.
At the Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade in Washington, Chinese officials promised better protection for foreign software. They promised not to discriminate against foreign intellectual property in government procurement. They even agreed to keep talking about improving how they award patents, a crucial step to prevent the proliferation of parasitic patents of little merit.
Yet for all the new agreements, stringent protection of foreigners’ intellectual property is at odds with China’s development strategy. Foreign companies operating in China complain that Beijing views the appropriation of foreign innovations as part of a policy mix aimed at developing domestic technology.
Bootleg copies of the “Dark Knight” and Shenzen sweatshops churning out fake Louis Vuitton bags are only part of the problem. Last March, the United States International Trade Commission banned imports of cast steel railway wheels made by the Chinese group Tianrui. Tianrui had hired nine employees from the Chinese licensee of Amsted Industries of Chicago, a maker of railway parts. They came with an armful of trade secrets that allowed Tianrui to muscle into the business.
This type of intellectual property theft is increasingly common, according to American companies operating in China. In fact, they say, it is tacitly supported by Beijing, and includes forcing foreigners to disclose their technology in order to gain contracts.
China’s new antimonopoly laws would allow compulsory licensing of foreign technologies in some cases and require foreign companies that wanted to merge with or buy a Chinese company to transfer technology to China. Several foreign companies have found themselves competing against Chinese firms using a slight variation of the foreign technology.
In 2005, the China National Railway Signal and Communication Corporation invited Germany’s Siemens to join in building trains for the Beijing-Tianjin high-speed railway. Most of the technology came from Siemens, which trained 1,000 C.N.R. technicians in Germany. But most of the trains were built in China. For the next project — the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail — the Ministry of Transportation decided it wanted domestic technology, and C.N.R. bumped Siemens out. CSR Corporation, another Chinese train builder, did the same with Kawasaki Heavy Industries of Japan.
China’s attempt to move up the tech ladder is natural. Many countries in history have pursued technological progress by first trying to piggyback on foreign inventions — tweaking and improving — before blazing their own trails. Still, intellectual property misappropriation cannot be a government policy goal, especially in a country the size of China, which can flood world markets with ill-begotten high-tech products.
The United States has made some progress at the World Trade Organization against the theft of intellectual property in China. But it must be much more vigilant and aggressive.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/24/opinion/24fri1.html?_r=1
“China is a nation run by goons and thugs.”
Better to be run by a bunch of goons and thugs than by a bunch of cowards and pussies like say…..south korea.
Nothing about the automotive industry in that link, just some unnamed editor having a whinge because he had nothing else to talk about.