“Manager Feng, I am Old Zhong. Is the Aiwa’s lawsuit over?”
Feng Yu raised his brows. Why is Zhong Qianxian concern about the lawsuit?
“It’s almost over. What is it?”
“A company in the US is manufacturing USB drives and are using our Aiwa Electronics patented technologies without authorization. I had confirmed this with our engineers, and the circuit boards are the same as ours.”
“So, you want to sue them?” Feng Yu is pleased to hear this. Using the law to protect the company’s interest is a good thing. In his previous life, many Chinese companies have patents. Still, they are only using it within China and do not care if overseas companies infringed on their patents.
Some patents are restricted within regions, some are too far away for the companies to care. Some companies felt they can never win against foreign companies!
“Yes. I discussed it with Xu Lihua and the rest. We must teach this company a lesson. I heard a few other companies in Singapore, and other countries had also used our patents illegally. We intend to sue all of them!”
“Hahaha… Old Zhong, I also know about this, but I think we should not sue them now.” Feng Yu laughed.
“Manager Feng, we owned the patent, why can’t we sue them? Although the patent application in the US is not approved yet, it will be approved this year.” Zhong Qingxian is anxious. Feng Yu had never been afraid of trouble. Why is he so timid today?
Zhong Qingxian had found out that patents must be applied in different countries. Still, if any countries in the world had approved the patent, no one else could apply for the same patent in other countries. The other countries are not allowed to grant approval unless that country is not abiding by the international intellectual property rights law.
Why can’t we sue them?!
“Old Zhong, I am not saying we should not sue them. I am asking you not to sue them now. Let me ask you. How many products have they produced now? If we sue and win the case against them, they can just stop production and will suffer little losses. How much compensation can we get from them? If we wait until they produce a high volume of products, or even expanded their production before we sue them for patent infringement, how much compensation will we get?” Feng Yu laughed.
“You are asking us to feign ignorance and let them be before we give them a deadly blow?” Zhong Qingxian thought to himself. Manager Feng is too evil. If they really do this, these companies will have to make high compensations.
Feng Yu knew several companies had tried to apply for the USB drive patents but were rejected. These companies saw it was a Chinese company that had applied for this patent and felt how someone from China can know about patent infringement?
In the past, China had never abided by international patent protection laws. Many products in China are from reverse-engineering overseas products by factories, and these factories will sell them within China.
Anyway, these companies were not exporting the products overseas and were only selling within their city. This was fine at first until those overseas companies found out. Hmph! No wonder no in China is buying our products. We had been imitated!
These foreign companies want to protect their interests, but China doesn’t accept these lawsuits. The thinking of the Chinese at that time is… You can sell chairs, why can’t I sell chairs too?! So what if the exterior looks the same, and the internal circuit boards are the same? We did not steal your design!
Reverse-engineering is so much easier than developing their own products. It is until Liu Chuanzhi’s father when China starts to look into patent protection. At that time, many Chinese inventions patents were registered by foreign companies overseas. When the Chinese companies tried to export their products overseas, they realized other countries rejected them.
For example, the VCD player’s patent had been registered by a Japanese company in Feng Yu’s previous life. This Japanese company had bought Jiang Wanmeng’s product and stole the technology through reverse-engineering it.
After that, this company raised complaints about their foreign affairs against the Chinese government. At that time, both nations were trying to improve their diplomatic relationships, and the Chinese government ordered Jiang Wanmeng to settle this with the Japanese company privately.
How did they settle this issue? Compensate that Japanese company a sum of money and pay them to patent fees. This Japanese company authorized the patent to many other companies and made high profits for every VCD player manufactured.
These companies had made money and also stopped the development of this industry in China. The VCD player technologies had evolved into DVD technologies, optical drives, etc. and the profits from it are significant. This is the reason why Jiang Wanmeng and the company he set up disappeared.
Although China had implemented copyrights law, many people from other countries still have the impression, or discrimination, that the Chinese do not know about intellectual property rights and are afraid of a foreigner!
So, many companies start to manufacture USB drives and even imported them to China. They marketed their products as an imported product and are selling more expensive than Wind and Rain, Aiwa, and Lenovo.
Feng Yu does not want to say anything about the Chinese fascination with imported products. It’s not easy to change the mindset of the people.
But Feng Yu believes that the Chinese will be convinced that Chinese products are the best in the world one day!
“Should we attack these companies in China first? For example, we can lower the prices and force them to lower their retail prices?” Zhong Qingxian thought of this idea. If they are going to set a trap for these companies, they might as well be more ruthless.
“No… no… no… why should we lower our prices? We had just introduced our 1 GB USB drive into the market and will be introducing the 2 GB model sometime later. We just need to maintain our lead in technologies, and our profits will be high. It is not easy for them to overtake us. Just let them grow, and we can make more patent fees from them in the future. I don’t want to sue them until they go bankrupt. Our target is to develop our flash drive technology’s usage. Didn’t you say the SD card I suggested is almost developed? Hurry up and apply for the patents before other companies.”
In Feng Yu’s previous life, Panasonic, Toshiba, and Sony had launched the SD card together, and they co-owned the patents. At that time, the SD cards they produced are for digital cameras.
Feng Yu had developed this SD card is for mobile phones. Of course, it can also be used for digital cameras.
Any technologies that are more advanced and sophisticated will bring in significant profits. Furthermore, this technology can limit Japan’s digital camera’s development.
Kameda Masao had spent quite a significant sum of money on buying the patent from Kodak, and Feng Yu has plans to introduce Wind and Rain, and Aiwa brands of digital cameras.
Wind and Rain and Aiwa brands should capture the majority of the market share in China because of their brand influence.
When SD cards are officially used, Feng Yu might be able to export it overseas.
……
“Hello, Feng. I am representing Microsoft to inspect Aiwa’s Little Tyrant development of our gaming console. Are you going to receive me personally?”
