Isn't that basically the reason patents exist? If you're really the first, you should be able to get about a 20 year head start.
If you win? Good luck collecting damages from China, and have fun suing the next brand that starts selling the same machine in different plastic
Or, said another way: unwillingness to enforce.
But you're totally right that enforcing them is extremely expensive, slow and risky.
That said, Roomba isn't exactly a startup but wasn't a tech giant either, and did enforce their patents often.
And especially against imported infringing products, the ITC provides a much cheaper, faster mechanism to get protection via injunctions.
People forget that the US is still the #2 manufacturer in the world, and that's (apparently) without halfway trying.
> Except our companies do just that, all the time. Who is the Chinese Intel? The Chinese Microsoft? The Chinese Boeing? The Chinese NVIDIA?
Where are the new ones?
Also Intel is not doing well, and the Chinese (after a fashion) Intel is TSMC, who also does NVIDIA's manufacturing.
> People forget that the US is still the #2 manufacturer in the world, and that's (apparently) without halfway trying.
So? That fact sounds like pablum. I think the real story of US manufacturing has been one of erosion of capabilities and long-term loss of strength. The US may still have a high ranking, but I'd bet: 1) much of that of that is low-volume and legacy, 2) second-place is still only 60% of what China does.
Zhaoxin makes X86 and countless make ARM and RiscV chips. SMIC being a foundry.
> The Chinese Microsoft?
Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, ByteDance.
>The Chinese Boeing?
Comac makes passenger and Chengdu fighter jets.
>The Chinese NVIDIA?
Huawei makes AI GPUs.
>People forget that the US is still the #2 manufacturer in the world
Considering the US never had its industry blown up in any war and could reap the benefits of 150+ years worth of stability, higher education, skilled immigration, compounding wealth, and taking over the vacuum and brains of Europe's post-war industrial powers, that's not really something THAT impressive.
>and that's (apparently) without halfway trying.
If it isn't halfway trying, why does it feel the need to sanction or ban chinese competitors?
Because it's easier than actually trying, as witnessed by this very story.
Germans also said the same thing about Chinese EVs in 2014. They ain't laughing now, especially in Dresden.
There isn't one.
AVIC owns Xi'an and Chengdu, who make large commercial aircraft and light bizjets, but they're in no way comparable to Boeing.
Unlike Boeing, they actually care about worker's rights, and product safety.
Manufacturer of what, exactly, though?
What do you export? What do you sell?
Food? Nope, illegal in most of the world.
Cars? Nope, uncompetitive in most of the world. "High end" American cars lack even basic features fitted to poverty-spec cars in the EU, like heated windscreens.
Computers? I'm typing this on a computer assembled in Scotland onto a Latvian-made chassis using a Chinese-made motherboard populated with Korean memory chips and an Israeli microprocessor.
What does the US actually make and sell, any more?
That's an opinion, and not one I agree with.
If you and your competitor are racing to develop a thing, whoever wins by a couple months shouldn't get a monopoly for decades.
Most of the time when things get patented, it's strictly worse for innovation in that space until the patents expire. 3d printing is a great example.
It's asinine to think you can outsource manufacturing of whatever object to some other company in another country, but that no one on the planet can make the same thing because "the idea is yours".
What happens at expiration is an important and intended feature of patents. They trade a legally guaranteed headstart against the requirement of publishing your methods for your competitors to learn from.
The fact that it takes decades for that to come about is harmful to society.
Lots of places sell unique/novel things that are not patented, successfullyn