Sorry "Stout Chuck" - I think your point is well made about IP, but I respectfully disagree on these examples.
The Aygo and Smart are not new or innovative and none have a patent on them, just copyright. The copies are absolutely blatant I agree - which is why I posted that thread.
As for cars, its been done before, outside China, by
American owned companies. Worked example - meet Mr Peugeot's excellent 205 hatchback circa mid 1980s
And then Mr Ford's slightly less good (in fact really cr@p) Fiesta circa early 1990s.
Similar I'm sure you will agree ? So did Mr Ford infringe on the IP of Mr Peugeot ? Well at the time Mr Peugeot didn't think so otherwise they would have been in court asap.
Its a similar story with other products - Sony didn't try and stop all those other personal stereos in the early 80s just because they invented the Walkman - they protected their own design. Toyota and Smart could (and should) in this case but I don't think either sell in China so they don't try.
The patents I am tapping about are real research, science, now stuff, things being thought of as innovative.
Patents though are tricky. In the US you can patent a concept, which is (or maybe was) not possible in the EU but US courts assumed it was enforceable beyond US borders. In India for example you can patent a product but not a process - so they make copies of drugs by altering the process slightly. All of these will come into line at some point.
I think China will be in a position to argue that their standards will become the world's standards mainly as they have most of the cash, and the military to back it up if anyone (i.e. you guys in the US) decide to disagree.
When I think of the US (or indeed the west as whole) attempting to dominate China, I can't help thinking of Ken Mcleod's quote about Europe :
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Hey, this is Europe. We took it from nobody; we won it from the bare soil that the ice left. The bones of our ancestors, and the stones of their works, are everywhere. Our liberties were won in wars and revolutions so terrible that we do not fear our governors: they fear us. Our children giggle and eat ice-cream in the palaces of past rulers. We snap our fingers at kings. We laugh at popes. When we have built up tyrants, we have brought them down. And we have nuclear *fu***ng* weapons.
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