I mean not trying to start a flame war, but everyone is
praising how great roborock is but the reality is, most of Xiaomi/Roborock technology is stolen/reversed engineered from Neato. Chinese robot vacuum would not even be close to their current capabilities if it wasn’t for the LiDAR on the XV11. If you look at the tear down from the first couple gen, the PCB and components were exactly the same compared to Neatos. (I owned both Neato and Roborock vacuums).
I was at iRobot for holiday season 2003; 1st gen Roomba was out, MANY of the returns piled up along the hallways of HQ.
One day the "director of sales"? walked into the standup meeting like Vince McMahon into the arena and slammed down this robot onto the coffee table that was a pitch-perfect copy of the Roomba, except it was tea green and had more colorful LEDs and sounds. "F this and F that" like we had any ability to stop that from happening. I did the teardown and it was a near-perfect mechanical copy like somebody walked the molds across the street. The PCB was different where they chose cheaper connectors. It was way prettier looking IMO. What they couldn't copy was the logic; the SW/uC was handled through a different chain so unless you literally stole a pile of programmed parts, you'd be on your own. The Roomba development team consoled themselves that the performance of floor coverage of this knock-off was worse than the original...but to be frank, both were only useful under limited circumstances that I found nobody I knew had. I'd have better luck with an old sweep-broom.
As an intern, those returns piling up were so they wouldn't get resold elsewhere or scavenged. And there were a LOT of returns; its a complicated design with a LOT of cables and connectors and some marginal components going out of the expected tolerances. One of my jobs was to strip out the batteries, lay these robots out in the back parking lot, and using a pointed steel rod, 'spear-fish' them to render them unusable. To make my work quick I'd aim for the 'brain' - the middle where the case was thin and I'd bust through the microcontroller part of the main PCB. Aim, 'crunch', make sure I 'killed' it, and then fling it into the dumpster. Nearly 20 years on, I fondly remember thinking 'I can't believe I get paid to do this!'
From what I can tell, Chinese companies will freely steal technology from other countries and companies, which is obviously frustrating and not great, but then they relatively quickly start exceeding the technology they stole, quickly adding features not present in the original products. So it's a bit dangerous for American companies to sit on their heels saying Chinese companies are stealing. Yes, they are, and it's frustrating, but then those Chinese companies add features at a rapid pace that the American companies can seemingly not keep up with.
I'm not sure how many Chinese HN users we have...but I'd personally love to see them chime in occasionally on this topic.
My personal experience/conclusions drawn from business, experiences in grad school etc. (so obviously not worth much and poorly sourced from a data perspective) are that certain seemingly obvious concepts like "cheating" or "stealing" are just fundamentally understood differently and not ingrained in a Western compatible way culturally in China. There seems to be deep differences there that manifest in all kinds of ways.
Bunnie Huang [1] has written/spoke on this topic. I think he mentions it in the Shenzen documentary [2]. Quote from the documentary page:
> We examine the unique manufacturing ecosystem that has emerged, gaining access to the world’s leading hardware-prototyping culture whilst challenging misconceptions from the west. The film looks at how the evolution of “Shanzhai” – or copycat manufacturing – has transformed traditional models of business, distribution and innovation, and asks what the rest of the world can learn from this so-called “Silicon Valley of hardware".
I'm not sure it's part of personal or societal culture. The Chinese people I know, granted who are all highly educated and also some of the nicest people I know period, do not abide by this culture of stealing/copying and find it as frustrating as anyone. So in my opinion, it's more of an economic and possibly state-driven culture.
"Stealing" and "cheating" was also the US way before it became the top dog. Intelectual property on patents has always been used as a tool for the current world powers to try to cement themselves as permanent world powers. But it doesn't work, other countries are also sovereign, and they don't have to respect US laws made to create US monopolies.
Most of the accusations about IP theft don't even involve actual registered IP. The fact that users on HN repeatedly fall into this pit shows how much the discussion has deteriorated on what's supposedly a platform less saturated with junk info like mainstream forums.
I think if a culture finds out that doing a particular thing benefits it greatly, and that it cannot be punished for doing that thing... it will do that thing.
This idea of "cultural differences in the idea of stealing" is a bit silly. It's based on self-reports of the people who are stealing, and making massive amounts of money from the theft. Rationalizations, in other words.
In all honesty, if I could "steal" from a culture with a far superior level of technology without repercussion, in order to sell products mainly within my own culture, I'd do it too. It's still a benefit to the whole group, isn't it? The same story plays out every time this power dynamic comes up, and in far more varied patterns than people talk about (e.g. Japan "stealing" transistor designs to start its electronics giants, with the cooperation of a few Americans but still against moral values).
On this note it’s always useful to reflect upon the era where the US also had a cultural acceptance of “stealing” technology from the UK, since America wasn’t always such a tech leader.
Also the story goes that the Wild West was so famous for not enforcing Edison’s patents, an entire industry formed to take advantage: Hollywood.
No sane human being would willingly step into an openly hostile environment to share their genuine opinions when there is a very obvious risk of being dehumanized, dismissed, and viciously attacked with but not limited to slurs and abusive wording, Chinese or otherwise.
Every major English-speaking social media/web forum has been embroiled with open hatred towards everyone and everything Chinese regardless of context or politics for more than a half decade by now.
In Chinese culture, copying (I would not use the word "stealing") symbolizes respect for a product and has roots in Confucianism (however, let's avoid potential exploitation of this). But don't forget that Americans behaved similarly in the 19th century [1], and Brits did the same to Dutchs. So I guess this is a common pattern for raising powers.
This pathetic point always gets brought up when talking about China's IP theft, but it should be telling that it is literally one individual from 200+ years ago who is always mentioned.
What did he do? He worked in a factory and memorized details about the machines, and then went to America and rebuilt them.
Is that what Chinese companies are doing? Do they get someone hired at the company, who then memorizes things, and then goes back to China and rebuilds them?
No one would care if China was operating the way Slater operated. That is common even with Americans moving from one American company to another. What is not common is directly stealing designs and schematics and billions of bits of other information through nefarious means, by breaching a company's cyber security or infiltrating their supply line.
The truth is, Chinese companies don't have any need to directly copy Western designs, certainly not anymore. They have the factories and ecosystem to rapidly design and build new products with a high level of quality and precision.
I wanted to work in the US designing hardware with my Computer Engineering degree, but I couldn't even find a job doing that. Now I'm in B2B software like everyone else.
In a lot of cases, Western companies go as far as outsourcing the entire design process to China. Entire consumer product categories are just white labeled Chinese designs.
We are long past the point of China doing some crude copy and pasting. It isn't Soviet Russia making exact copies and producing poor quality facsimiles. The West needs to stop thinking of China's economic might as something that was only acquired by "cheating."
This is where we are at: Huawei has better image processing software than Apple. Roborock has more features and a more intelligent robot vacuum than iRobot. TikTok is better than Instagram or Facebook. BYD sells more EVs than Tesla. Which Western company makes an off-street EV utility vehicle with a dump bed, air conditioning, and infotainment like this one?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bixJDOH864U
This isn't really at all about China "copying" or "stealing" Western IP, because Chinese products are quite often better than Western ones at lower prices.
The idea that China isn't its own R&D powerhouse is, at this point, an insult to the individuals who are creating all of this stuff.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery is the go to argument here? And it wouldn’t be complete without 200 year old whataboutism. I am unimpressed.
Perhaps because there has been nothing worth stealing there, and hence a culture of “stealing” never appeared. This might change of course, if/when China starts pumping out radically superior products.
Sadly I think this is just encouraging US companies to make products that phone home, and require a service contract. It's much harder to copy that part, and more lucrative.
Just look at the tear down videos on the XV11 compared the any roborock tear down. I would link you the XV11hacking site but seems like it’s down. It had everything from firmware to schematics that hobbyist did in the early 2010s since it was the cheapest way to get a 2D LiDAR (pulling it from a the vacuum itself).
You said they were "exactly the same" circuit boards. You're saying you were able to make that evaluation using multiple tear-down videos that weren't doing a side-by-side?
I'm not the GP poster, but doing a visual comparison, if you've got chips of the same size and shape in the same places, and the same passives in the same places, and the trace routing is also visually the same between them, wouldn't you feel that's pretty definitive?
And it's quite disingenuous for IT people to make a fuss about it. EVERYTHING in tech started with some sort of piracy, of music, of web content, of videos, of books, of hotels, of taxis, it's persistently the right strategy. And that's good, the world can't hang onto gatekeepers forever.
It matters because people who take risk and innovate should be rewarded. When that fails, theres no point for anyone to take risks and release new products.
The result is also all of the innovative product ideas that never see the light of day because two weeks after launch there’d be a Chinese knock off on the market for half the price making it impossible to recoup R&D.
That’s a big reason behind the push to SaaS and server based solutions.
What about copying someone else’s design, making minor improvements (often regressions due to incomplete RE), and having a lower cost basis sounds like innovation to you?
well, i guess it depends... there are cases where something is totally copied 1-1 then maybe costs cuts are in labor, or they are in quality
in the case of worse quality, wouldn't the market just filter out such inferior products via competition? same with labor practices and bad pr from that.
additionally, if the 'minor improvements' are what people want (sometimes as a trade-off to quality) then thats what the market has signaled it prefers...
if the originating company doesn't meet that preference or demand, why should some admittedly state-provided protection (some might say monopoly) of intellectual property be able to protect them from competitors who will?
Facebook stealing from snapchat. Youtube stealing from instagram who stole from tiktok , stealing from vine etc etc. I don't think it stopped other people from taking risks.
This is the moral theory behind patent laws, and I’ve never seen definitive evidence that it actually helps, and a lot of examples where IP law completely hampers innovation or at least adds layers of bureaucracy.
I’m glad we don’t have to deal with this issue as much in software. I can’t imagine that a world where all the companies actually tried to enforce their software patents would be better for anyone but the lawyers.
As a consumer, I don't give a damn about these companies copying each other, I just want better products. But yeah, if I worked at iRobot I would be annoyed.
I shouldn't be commenting this deep into flame but...
That's a demonization argument. If anything china-related is bad ipso facto, then I suppose discussion ends where it starts. What comes after "tyrannical, genocidal, geopolitical rival" in a sentence doesn't matter.
If talking IP/Patents... I think the american position is somewhat blind. Consider:
(1) Patents are a recent invention, not a longstanding or inevitable institution
(2) There are some decent (IMO) arguments for patents being bad in general, economically, technologically and morally.
(3) China has been forced to adopt this "western" patent system, under which it owns almost no patents. They play very loose with the rules, but they still exist within that legal framework.
The US' no. 1 priority in trade deals and foreign policy generally was and remains patent enforcement, US-like contract enforcement and other commercial law stuff... "Governance" is the categorical euphemism. The US is as serious about this stuff as China is about Taiwan. China, and almost every other country abides it, whether or not it's compatible with their interest, values, etc.
(4) Those American companies made those investments, and have enjoyed the returns. They knew the rules going in and chose to comply over decades. Are they US companies? Aren't they "global companies?" That's the approach the US itself has been evangelising for 40 years.
Is the "fair" scenario you imagine a world where US companies produce their products in china, without local technology transfers and spin off industries? That's total nonsense, and outside the (advisable) scope of a legal system to enforce. US companies take the lion's share of profits, offloading the high turnover, low margin sectors... Like the Apple/Foxconn thing. Well... everything has consequences.
You really imagine a world where china builds all the vacuum cleaners, but can't build vacuum cleaners by itself?
Exactly, our patent system is causing innovation in the US to happen on a cycle similar to the life of the patents themselves. Things don't progress until the patents expire and other companies can copy them (see also, the segway mess, electric unicycles, onewheels, or... vacuums).
It isn't at all obvious that patents are more helpful than harmful in this space.
China is a totalitarian state—the Chinese government can coerce its corporations to take any action for any reason at any time. If the Chinese government is an enemy of the US, and Chinese companies function as an extension of their country's government, then we must treat those companies as enemies. The people who work in those corporations are mostly average Joes like you and I, but the CCP can harvest their organs at any time, so we are forced to be wary.
>That's a demonization argument. If anything china-related is bad ipso facto, then I suppose discussion ends where it starts. What comes after "tyrannical, genocidal, geopolitical rival" in a sentence doesn't matter.
Yes, we shouldn't be supporting China in any way. They are an enemy and don't share our values, and it's an unfortunate consequence of poor policy that we do business with them at all.
You know what the US also had in the 1800s? Slaves. Doesn’t justify for anyone else legalizing slaves in this day and age. That’s why whataboutism is a fallacy.
Past history is not a moral argument.
Sure it isn't if it doesn't suit you, very convenient. Yet we live in very world completely and utterly in pure 100% mathematical way defined by only our past.
All the crap happened/happening/will happen in middle east and africa? Consequence primarily of european colonialism. Sure we can argue that enough time has passed, entire generations. Yet the places are as fucked up as ever, I would argue even more so.
Or you can explain this to germans who as a nation are still traumatized by what their ancestors did in WWII (shows how decent the core/soul of that nation is... imagine russians in similar situation, they would just blatantly lie about it and imprison/disappear anybody saying differently, like ie Katyn massacre).
Past is a moral argument, like it or not. It isn't a tool to justify anything and I am not commenting on current topic of intellectual theft (which is a rather pointless tea time effort) but ignoring it won't you any good since you won't be able to grok why people or nations behave as they do.
Not sure how I’m deciding certain standpoints when it’s convenient for me. There’s a big difference on acknowledging the past as a understanding of where we are today compared to justifying your actions of today morally based on the past decisions of others. The difference is this, “People in our past did some really shitty things, we acknowledge it, and it put us in our current position” vs “Someone in the past did shitty stuff, so it’s totally cool for me to be equally shitty”. Once again, your argument is textbook whatsboutism. Why
it’s a fallacy is because all your examples is trying to deflect your moral deficiencies on the basis of others. The conversation should be steered to on the morality of IP theft. Not whether others have done it or not.
I’m curious what you consider a legitimate moral conversation to look like. When I hear that I think “philosophy before 1800s” where you can appeal to moral absolutes via God (yet still end up in unsolved debates. It seems even harder today.
Basically every culture has had genocidal endeavors. Does this mean we can justify genocide currently, or in the future? Me thinks not. Do you want to act morally now, or use some past action as an excuse to not do the right thing?
That type of engineering that Compaq performed was very specific clean room reverse engineering or clean room design, which is specifically designed as a defense against copyright infringement because it relies on independent creation by going off the specification (in Compaq case the Bios specification) and not the original design.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design
Right, and that's where I question whether the "clean room" is something that is morally necessary.
If it's okay to copy something in the legal way that Compaq did it, why is it not legal to skip the clean room and just copy a design?
I don't mean espionage and actual stealing of code/schematics (I don't think many Chinese companies engage in that, contrary to the perception). I mean, the company buys the product, inspects it, then copies it.
If Compaq had done that directly, it would have been illegal, but the outcome would have been the same as the clean room design.
I question the merits of having that level of copy protection where reverse engineering is only legal in a specific and arbitrarily convoluted way. To me it seems like that idea might encourage monopolies and higher prices for everyone.
Because going off IBM's design would have been illegal. It's one of the most famous and well documented reverse engineering projects ever, and they had no copies of the IBM Bios in their clean room because otherwise it would have been illegal. That's literally what clean room reverse engineering means.
Why does large-scale corporate IP theft matter? Well, for one thing, I can't imagine the next Neato being willing to invest in all that R&D if a chinese company is going to rip it off and sell it for peanuts, just so the internet can say "wow, this chinese product is amazing, and I don't know why corporate IP theft matters!"
The risk of someone ripping off your idea, designs, etc. has always existed, exists now more than ever with the internet, yet it doesn’t seem to stop people with ideas from trying to take those ideas to fruition.
I’ve never talked to any rational person with an idea they were passionate about who said they weren’t interested in continuing with it because someone else might steal it.
Then you've never talked to any VC or angel investor.
A primary concern of any investor is whether you have a defensible 'moat" for your product or service - can you make something that will then have a high barrier to entry of competitors.
If you cannot articulate how you will have reasonably solid protection from patents. copyright, or trade secret practices, good luck getting investment.
Your only strategy will be to somehow make & stock ready to ship as much of your easily copied product as you can before promoting it, and hope your promotion, marketing, and initial sales are a huge hit BEFORE some Chinese rip-off artist starts marketing it on AliBaba in single-digit days. I've read of cases where people had their product literally found for sale on Chinese sites before their first marketing & customer shipments started, because the design was ripped off from the factory.
The only reason engineers in the US adopted "clean rooms" was to circumvent copyright law, not because they simply weren't willing to copy IP from their competitors. US companies still invested heavily in R&D. Maybe Chinese companies will do the same?
It's a free market. There are plenty of companies investing in R&D even after knowing that there is the possibility of copyright infringement. There is still a huge upside in developing these tech.
The companies knew that copyright infringement is a possibility when developing the tech. They knew the reward was still worth it despite of that.
I am not getting anything designing work for you. On the other hand I can launch my own side projects. I know that if they are any good people are going to copy and start rip offs. I am willing to take that risk.
