IP is not property (usus, fructus, abusus) so the concept of IP theft is not meaningful
- copyright
- trademark
- patent
Which are legitimate legal constructs in their own right, but they're not property. In this case, I think we're talking about patent infringement.
So long as both jurisdictions have agreed to recognize each other's patent laws, it may still be just as illegal as theft.
Whether it's as immoral as theft is a different sort of thing (I say it isn't, which is why I nitpick like this).
So it's probably mostly patent impingement.
And I think we all know how:
- large cooperation infringe on patents of smaller ones without relevant consequences all the time
- there is an endless number of complete absurd patents wrt. software. The patent system in context of software is fundamentally broken.
- due to the US patent system being even more broken then the German one (was at the time the article refers to) the infringed patent might not even have been a valid patent.
But what of this points apply to this specific case I don't know.
The only thing that really bothers me about this case is that disregarding IP law is a privilege that you can buy by hiring an army of lawyers. I wish that problematic laws could be ignored equally by all players.
Being a scientist. Or working in academia. Net worth of greatest scientific minds in history, like Einstein or Heisenberg was less than that of average software dev, let alone bankers/businessmen.
At most you can hope to get a Noble Prize, but your discoveries of nuclear physics or quantum mechanics are unpatentable. Fist the journals make money by selling your work, then the companies do, you generally get nothing.
I wish there were a charity I could donate to that finds companies that engaging in that sort of behavior and sabotages their bottom line in nonviolent ways. If you can convince me that you'll hurt 'em to the tune of $10 for every $1 of mine, I'll have a couple hundred for you.