The Chosun Ilbo ran a piece Wednesday about the headaches Korean providers of online services are having with Chinese firms blatantly ripping off their products. Read the piece on your own, but while you’re at it:
Korea’s Cyworld and China’s Etang.com and Hawa
Korea’s Kart Rider and China’s Kart Racer
75 Comments
Ah, so that’s probably why Cyworld is making a Chinese version. I was wondering about that.
Shak: Marmot I’ve been reading for years, it’s kept me amused through many a dull day at work, and he never pulls punches, he posts about all things Korea, but there’s a fuller sense of the subject here than I got from your site, and no overweening agenda as I suspect you have. Everybody’s entitled to their opinion, though, so knock yourself out.
Maybe Shak can put up more links and stories about elementary school Japanese girls with big breasts.
Shak: Marmot I??ve been reading for years, it??s kept me amused through many a dull day at work, and he never pulls punches, he posts about all things Korea, but there??s a fuller sense of the subject here than I got from your site, and no overweening agenda as I suspect you have.
Thats fine. I only post about things that come up when I meet Koreans in real life anyway. News articles about north Koreas latest diplomatic fencing doesnt interest me in the least. As I have already stated on my blog, I dont pretend to be free of bias as much of the things on my blog identify negative things about Koreans. Still, there are plenty of blogs that write positive things about Korea. I dont think my blog is the final word in Korea, not in the least. It is an alternative perspective, and attempting ‘balance’ would just turn it into another bad marmot clone.
Aren’t things simply coming full circle?
Kushibo you are spreading bold text all over the place. Everyone but you can see it.
China’s equivalent of Google, Baidu.com, not only copies Google’s format but also seemingly has the easiest way to download mp3’s. All of China uses it to copy mp3’s. With Baidu, there are copy infringement issues on multiple levels.
How about Japan’s Mario Kart to Korea’s Kart Rider?
Poor Koreans….. Pretty balsy of them to whine about knockoff products after seeing Zec crackers (Ritz) TP candy (mms)8:15 cola (Coke). Even the Japanese candy Hi-chew was knocked off as My-chew by Korean makers only a few months after it was on the market. I’ve also heard Bbae-bbae-ro was a knockoff of Pocky?
The chickens have come home to roost. If Korean companies start losing money to knock-offs, maybe they will push for giving the current laws more teeth and/or getting better laws.
Good lord, stupidity trully knows no bounds. Chairman of Lotte group, that confectionary company in Japan, is also a well known zainichi. Doesn’t it make a whole lotta business sense to market these products in “virgin” markets? Being korean, he probably knew a lot about business in Korea. Oh yeah, slapping on a japanese name in a country that persecutes you for buying japanese products is a real good business idea.
For you people not well versed in business or history of economic development, I got some news for you. Most all the rich nations today stole ideas from someone else–and that’s why they are rich. (sometimes they even stole people!) Oh let us see. United States, amongst many things, stole the steam engine from Britain. Well, the Euros stole the concept of standardized parts from the US. Japan of course, stole lots of things from the west aside from modern medicine and sanitation. Korea in turn, stole ship building from Japan. And now China is stealing website design. And India “steals” generic AIDS medicine. And so on and so forth. But we don’t even have to “nationalize” the issue. Bill Gates stole GUI from Steve Jobs who in turn stole it from Xerox. This is true whether we are talking about toilette paper technology to jet fighter technology.
This is how the world makes progress. Somewhere along the line, though, some vested interests decided to implement a concept of patents, copyrights, and all that fun stuff. I’m sure that somewhere in the graves of China, there is someone who who invented the gunpowder, who is rolling in his graves for failing to invent the concept of patents. Only if “John” had the forsight and copyrighted the Gospel of John… Today all his inheritors will be making bucket loads of cash, just from the Gideons.
Put things into perspective my friend. Pepsi and RC Cola are knock off of Coke. Zec isn’t the only cracker company to copy Ritz. Modern milk chocolate making technique was invented in europe, but hershy stole the concept and made modification in industrialization. Then the europeans started to copy what he did and mass market chocolates in a candy bar format. So now he puts a nice sugar coating around the candy, so it will melt in your mouth and not in your hands (and thereby contributing to the development of modern marketing and false advertising) and voila~ Someone else copies even this.
The first Korean person to go to China and saw that they have rice farming are thieves I tell you. Thieves~~ Industrial espionage in pre-industrial times.
A funny case of what goes around comes around.
Korea has a serious problem with under-developed intellectual rights laws and practices, so all of this is not unexpected. Enforcing trademarking here is not an easy affair and developing trademarking is a “labor of Hercules” as well. Try getting a trademark for something in Korea and see how long it takes or how government officals act! Frankly, it would be cheaper and more expediant to just hire some goons to break some legs rather than attempting a legal remedy in Korea.
A funny case of what goes around comes around.
What a lame and passive-aggressive attempt to get us to read your blog.
What a lame and passive-aggressive attempt to get us to read your blog.
Dude, when are you going to stop stalking me?
I fell for it and clicked Shak’s link–his blog has two subjects: terrorism in London and unflattering postings about Koreans. You seem a bit obsessed with the (perceived) failings of Koreans, Shak, what’s up with that?
It’s funny when you see a country that got where it is by import substitution whinge when somebody does it to them. As Nelson Muntz so aptly said: “Ha, ha!”
I recall the RD head of a Korean ice cream company in the 90s whose sole activity was to fly to Japan and bring back samples of Japanese ice cream to be copied.
And Shakuhachi — good site. But Moon Pies have been around in the U.S. for over 75 years. You should think about putting a picture of one of them before the Japanese copy.
I fell for it and clicked Shak??s link??his blog has two subjects: terrorism in London and unflattering postings about Koreans. You seem a bit obsessed with the (perceived) failings of Koreans, Shak, what??s up with that?
As someone that has an interest in Korea, this subject interests me. As for terrorism, this is a subject that deserves the attention of everyone.
Keep in mind that the blog is only 2 months old, and there are very few postings. If other things happen that interest me, I may post about them.
By the way, by saying that you ‘fell for it’, do you mean to say that it was irrelevant to the subject of this thread?
And Shakuhachi ?? good site. But Moon Pies have been around in the U.S. for over 75 years. You should think about putting a picture of one of them before the Japanese copy.
Too true! Someone pointed that out in the comments section.
shakuhachi’s blog
Hrm, odd. Only part of my message showed up.
shakuhachi’s blog
Okay, nevermind then. I didn’t realize Cyworld was coming out with a Chinese version? I never got the point in Cyworld..
Shak, it just has a lot of posts that put Koreans in an unflattering light. Everybody’s got their failings, but your blog is monomaniac–did you teach in Korea? I get the feeling you got dong-chimmed one time too often.
Everybody??s got their failings, but your blog is monomaniac
Brother, you said my blog was about Korea and the war on terror - is it monomanaic or not? ^^
By the same token you could say that ‘The Economist’ is monomanaic, ‘ooh, where are all the social interest stories?’. I will tell you what, do a google search for the old versions of marmots blog. You will probably be surprised about the content.
Shak, it just has a lot of posts that put Koreans in an unflattering light.
You should read more of the blog because I have answered all this stuff in the comments section. I have an open ending offer to delete anything on my blog that someone can point out is untrue. If some things on my blog are unflattering to Koreans, well, all I can say is that they are the very things that Koreans themselves often boast about.
I get the feeling you got dong-chimmed one time too often.Dong-chimming is now considered in educational circles a minor form of sexual assault. Our mom-and-pop documenary division is doing a sex education series that brings that up specifically.
KrZ wrote:Kushibo you are spreading bold text all over the place. Everyone but you can see it.KrZ, are you seeing the bold in Hwangto tan and Boseong green tea, or just in Plain vanilla?
Look, I see it, but I don’t see how I can do anything about it. I am doing blockquoting no differently than I always have been. It appears to be happening only when I use blockquoting right before. It appears to be happening only in Plain vanilla. It is happening regardless of what platform and browser I use.
So, I don’t see how this is anything I can control on my end. Maybe there’s something wrong with the Plain vanilla formatting, or the set-up in general (since about once or twice a week I will suddenly be thrown into the vat of Plain vanilla, on both platforms).
Well, I just skimmed Shak’s blog.
You know what? The case of copying products has long been recognized also in Korea. Even Han-ryu was at its first stage a form of copying Japanese culture. And now may young Koreans feel shame on those facts.
So you’re right with your argument in some points.
Then are you ready for other facts? If you don’t mind, how about beginning with 743 headlines yesterday? An official document from then Japanese gerverment about over 1,000 people - most of them Chinese but 6 Koreans and some Russians - was now found in China and reported here in Seoul. And as far as I know, there’s no official comment on that 731 case from Japanese goverment. If ever, just help me to find and check. Anyway, if I try to relate this kind of stuff with current young Japanese culture, then is would not make sense though. And again, if I try to profess that it’s a part of Japanese originality, then it would be a backbiting.
My opinion is that your alternative point seems to be blocking any kind of discussing with your Korean counterpart. I think that both sides have many good and bad things that can be used rationally or emotionally. hope to be on a side that can help us to understand each other better with a lot of varios talks.
Once as a programmer and network engineer, all I can tell you is that Nexon’s “Kart Rider” is now be blamed for copying Nintendo’s “Mario Kart” here. Cyworld is first created by some students from Kaist as far as I know and it’s based on IRC code. But they didn’t make much fortune and SK Telecom acquired the service and made it a representative personal homepage service. And SK communication, an affiliate of SK Telecom, runs its own chinese Cyworld service. you can find it on “http://www.cyworld.com.cn“. I heard that they are preparing for Japanese service but still it’s not open though.
Chewie I’m not sure your strenuous attempts to impress us with your skill at logic or your skills with the ladies are having the intended effect. Maybe you should cut back on the crystal a little, it’s bad for you.
Anyway, believe me Chewie, I don’t and can’t put nearly the herculean efforts into stalking you that you put into whining, bitching, and jiral spasming about Korea, Kyopo, your numerous blog enemies, or whatever other bug you apparently have lodged in your posterior.
To be honest, I admire your dedication. It’s dedication to pettiness to be sure, but dedication in life certainly counts for something. Whenever I get discouraged and think it’s not worth it to continue in whatever pettiness I’m pursuing at the moment, I can always think of how hard you work at it and keep going. Thanks for the inspiration.
Shak: “much of the things on my blog identify negative things about Koreans.” We have Bingo!
I see, it only happens when using the plain vanilla template. How strange.
I see, it only happens when using the plain vanilla template. How strange. How poetically profound: by looking at things through a plain, vanilla template, one tends to seek out simple cause-and-effect pointing us in the wrong direction, when in fact the real factors may be many and evasive.
Am now savoring the warm glow of schadenfreude.
Dong-chimming is now considered in educational circles a minor form of sexual assault. Our mom-and-pop documenary division is doing a sex education series that brings that up specifically.
Next, on a very special episode of “Isaac and Dorothy”…
Wrong mom-and-pop organization.
“Join us next as Matthew shows us what is and is not appropriate touching in the kindergarten classroom”.
He’d probably know, too.
i like kushibo’s suggestion for putting up pictures of young girls with big breasts. btw, when i korea ever gonna knock-off the japanese schoolgirl uniforms? they’re just so frumpy and unwieldy here.
better than school uniforms in China, which are sweatpants and seatjackets.
Dong-chimming is now considered in educational circles a minor form of sexual assault.
Was that ‘a minor form’ or ‘a minor’s form’?
I’m waiting for Shak to put up a list of all the failings by Japan and make an entire web site about it. I’m not holding my breath. Turn the clock back a few decades, I wonder how Japan looked in its relation to the United States, and the copying of American culture.
The fact that copying of J-culture in Korea is not exactly news to Koreans. As the title of this thread suggests, I don’t think Chosun was whining about Chinese copying of K-culture. It’s more like pride and satisfaction that “others are now copying us, we have arrived”. Really read the fine prints.
And I have a tiny suggestion for your website to you Shak. If you are going to cut and paste my comments from here, and post them on your website then title it as “A Korean from Canada”, then you should at least have the courtesy to let me know that you’ve posted my comments on your site, and perhaps give me a chance to rebut on your comments to my comments. You have done the same thing with Oranckay. It’s a very sneaky tactic to score points with your audience there.
If you are going to cut and paste my comments from here, and post them on your website then title it as ??A Korean from Canada??, then you should at least have the courtesy to let me know that you??ve posted my comments on your site, and perhaps give me a chance to rebut on your comments to my comments. You have done the same thing with Oranckay. It??s a very sneaky tactic to score points with your audience there.
Sigh. It was trackbacked on the very thread that I posted it on (that means, that post was linked on that thread). Furthermore, everything I wrote on my page was exactly the same as what I wrote here.
Did he really do that though? Now that is the obsessive dedication to pettiness that I keep talking about.
Go Chewie!
Virtual, I doubt if Korea even granted access to their market for these American products to begin with. If you ate Ritz ten years ago you probably bought it from a market where it was smuggled in via the USFK Korea’ PX like in Namdaemun. You were probably gouged to the nines by the shady vendor as well. If these products were too expensive it was due to ineffective distribution or unfair import restrictions. I’ve been here seven years and American goods were a little more but not astronomically more expensive than Korean stuff when I arrived.
You don’t fire up the oven at Granny’s house and wip up a bunch of Ritzs. Obviously there is a process involved, ingredients and special equipment needed to turn out large quantities of this product. I’m sure the original producer of these goods put forth a great deal of research and marketing to develop this product and they have the right to have these processes protected. Being a Western company I’m also sure they went through the proper legal channels and paid for the rights to acquire the technologies needed to go into production without fear of legal action.
Not every company that develops new goods is a large multinational monster. The future of many small and medium sized businesses may depend on returns on investment from one or two new technologies. If they are allowed to be simply knocked off the second they hit the market why should they put forth the blood sweat and tears into RD in the first place? Allowing patent infringement and copyright violation to persist stifles progress. It is not a form of progress as you say.
Patents and brand names protect those who have enough balls and vision to realize a return on what may be years of research and development.
Virtual wanderer. Pretty silly analogies. Taking an idea or concept, and applying it to suit different applications is totally different from copying a product, giving it a similar name and packaging it in an identical manner to dupe consumers.
Well, yes, if you take a concept and apply it to suit different applications that really is different.
So you are telling me that Pepsico did a remarakbly different thing from Coke? Oh that’s a “real” original product. Do you really think the Korean consumers at the time thought Zec crackers were equal quality product to Ritz crackers? Unlike you, I actually lived in Korea during the times when important products like Ritz or Smuckers jam was prohibitively expensive for average consumption. Stuff like Zec was what we ate, because we couldn’t afford Ritz. Even if there was no import tax, Korean won wasn’t worth much. But are you so naive as to think that the Korean population thought that a domestic Korean product was the equal quality as the American/Japanese counterpart? That’s just being silly, and you are just showing how little you know about Korea at this time. I remember during those times we thought anything made in America/Japan was the best products in the world, and Koreans are today are by far, more brand-conscious than the average American.
So why the heck copy even the very image of the packaging? The basic message is that, if you can’t aford the real thing, here is an affordable alternative. It’s not a bad business strategy to emulate a winning formula. “copying a product” is exactly what everyone does. Why not copy marketing?
This is how this sort of things work. At first they slap on a Gucchi label in a sweatshop, because all the local population wants the good quality and high status symbol Gucchi product. But of course, the actual quality of the imitation product pales to a real Gucchi. Gucchi doesn’t really care, because those people who buy the fake can’t afford the real thing, but is at the same time, increasing brand awareness. Now, these people who buy the fake realizes the gap in quality between the fake and the authentic, and eventually the buyers point out the fakes are too ridiculously fake. The fake producers produce closer and closer imitation to Gucchi until their skills have become high enough that it actually becomes indistinguishable from Gucchi. At this point Gucchi gets really alarmed and takes serious legal action, but by that time the fakers have developed to the point they can start their own brand name and compete against Gucchi. Then they will name themselves a Korean name of some sort, and go to China, at which point the Chinese fake producers copy the Koreans.
This is how the world is, and those nations that learned to do it well have prospered and those nations that didn’t learn is still in poverty. The essence of economic development is based on learning to do things better way.
Concept of “branding” is relatively new to human civilization.
dang, mea culpa for many spelling errors. i wrote important instead of import product.
“Gucchi doesn??t really care, because those people who buy the fake can??t afford the real thing, but is at the same time, increasing brand awareness.” Ummm, not exactly. In 2003, counterfeits cost manufacturers $450 billion. I think Gucci would definitely care about lost revenue and damage to its image from shoddy knockoffs. Also, practically all counterfeiting goes untaxed, so it contributes to all the money circulating in the global underground economy, which is another interesting subject (well, to me anyway).
Manufacturers probably do lose billions of dollars a year to counterfeits, and infringement of intellectual and trademark property is a serious issue. And I would agree that, for example, Luis Vuitton’s brand image probably loses as much through shoddy knock-offs as it gains through not so shoddy ones.
What Virtual Wonderer was specifically mentioning, however, was people who can’t afford the real thing. You can’t treat sales of counterfeit goods to people who can’t afford the real thing as “lost revenue,” because the legit manufaturer wouldn’t have made the sale in the first place, even if the knock-off didn’t exist. That’s a projected sale that would never materialize.
Well, I don’t disagree with you. If the brand suffers because the value goes down because of all the fake Guccis, then that does amount to lost revenue.
On a side note, there was an international (?) study done a few months ago that fingerednot China or any other of the usual suspects, but Canada (yes, Canada) as one of the worst offenders for producing counterfeit goods! Go figure….
Damn Canucks!
I should devote a blog to their deceptions! 
Foreigner, Gucchi cares, because the current crop of counterfeit products is almost indistinguishable from the real thing. Most Korean women I know simply assumes that their neighbor’s Gucchi is a fake. In fact, the ones with the “real” ones always always always point out that it’s “real” and not fake and talk about how much it cost. They might as well staple the bill of receipt on the bag. I don’t think your argument really works too well though. Korea/Taiwan/Hk (i.e. coutries that love those italian bags) LOVE and adore the actual real thing. Which is why they copy the real in the first place.
Come on foreigner, you are telling me if there was stringent enforcement, Gucchi profits would have gone up by close to half a billion dollars?
Korean female bag consumers seem to be very expert in spotting the “real” and the “fake.” People who can afford the real don’t buy the fake to save money. They buy the real for the sake of having the real product. There aren’t always buying superior craftmanship, they are buying the status symbol. And that’s what Gucchi bags are. Like I said, Gucchi faces a real challenge when fakers can reproduce an exact duplica.
foreigner wrote:Ummm, not exactly. In 2003, counterfeits cost manufacturers $450 billion.Only if everybody who bought a fake could afford to buy the real thing.
steve wrote:Virtual, I doubt if Korea even granted access to their market for these American products to begin with.Then you’d be wrong. Upscale department stores of the day, like Lotte, sold genuine Ritz with the proper import labels. They were brought in, I believe, by import-export businesses that used to be ubiquitous.If you ate Ritz ten years ago you probably bought it from a market where it was smuggled in via the USFK Korea?? PX like in Namdaemun.Yes, they were available there, too, and they were around the same price as the legitimate stuff.You were probably gouged to the nines by the shady vendor as well. If these products were too expensive it was due to ineffective distribution or unfair import restrictions.My ex-fiancee was extremely embarrassed by the fact that her mother ran a black-market “warehouse” out of their second apartment in Hannam-dong, where I often stayed with my ex and her siblings, so I got a very close look at the business (yeah, it bothered me, too, and I was always trying to get the parents to go legit, like with a restaurant).
The fact is that no one really gouged anyone. Goods passed through several sets of hands from the ration control cardholder (usually the GI or the GI’s spouse) to the eventual consumer, and each tacked on about 10 to 20%, except for the GI or GI spouse, who usually got a little more.
It wasn’t so much about selling goods with a high mark-up (since no one person except sometimes the cardholder did a high mark-up over what they had purchased it for; also the money was to be made for selling in bulk), but about selling things that couldn’t be gotten otherwise. Ritz, Quaker oats, Nestle’s chocolate chips, Goober jam, Skippy peanut butter, Zojirushi (?) small appliances, etc., just weren’t being imported in local shops where these goods were being sold. Without this black market, no one would be able to buy some of these goods. Off-base, where else but the black market can I get Cream of Wheat?
I want to add that the original manufacturer of these goods were not harmed by these sales. Nor, really, was the AAFES, which still made money from the sales. If anything, it cut into the ROK tax base, which was basically penalizing people for wanting to use non-Korean products. I??ve been here seven years and American goods were a little more but not astronomically more expensive than Korean stuff when I arrived.Then you missed the period he is talking about. Before the WTO kicked in, paying double for black market or legally imported American, Japanese, or European goods was the norm.
Of course - the folks who dug that tunnel into the alcohol stores at Yongsan were simply community service-oriented in the extreme. It’s refreshing to know that black marketeering is conducted for essentially philanthropic reasons. What’s next, then - micro-loans for oxtail outlets?
Further, the idea that manufacturers are not harmed by black-market sales of items sold originally to the military presupposes an understanding of the sales contract. From previous work experience, I can assure that some companies sell to the military at prices lower than those offered to any others.
In the case of a company for which I once worked, tonnes of fish fillets were sold on a regular basis to the military at prices below our ‘best’ price, simply because the company owner wanted to give somethng back to the adoptive country that had enriched him. I honestly can’t imagine the fellow feeling pleased as a result of any expanded market share due to black market sales.
Kushibo, I still get angry that my mom gave away my beloved Zojirushi lunch box…
gbnhj wrote:In the case of a company for which I once worked, tonnes of fish fillets were sold on a regular basis to the military at prices below our ??best?? price, simply because the company owner wanted to give somethng back to the adoptive country that had enriched him. I honestly can??t imagine the fellow feeling pleased as a result of any expanded market share due to black market sales. Was the guy selling the fish sticks at below his cost to produce them? And were these black-market sales going to people he would otherwise have been reaching? If the answer to both of these is ‘no,’ then I would say it was not really hurting, him being displeased notwithstanding.
In your experience, were many/any of these big names (Nabisco, Nestle, etc.) selling to the military at lower prices than to others?
One other thing… while companies might sell to the military for a lower price, does this necessarily represent a loss to the companies? After all, once the military takes over, the company no longer has to worry about marketing costs (including television commercials on AFN or displays in the store).
Also, I want to point out to you a personal experience. After immigration, my parents owned a small store as is the case for many Korean American immigrant that came in during the 80’s. Let me take you back to a time warp, back in the happy days of late 1980’s. Back in those days, this is really gonna be difficult thing for you to remember, but the California Raisons were big fad. Oh yes. Americans just couldn’t get enough of those amorphic(sp?) wrinkly purple jazz players with rayban sunglasses. Oh we couldn’t get enough of them in fact. My parents at this time thought, “These Americans are really strange,” went down to chinatown and bought a box full of California Raison figurines. Oh they sold like hotcakes I tell you. Until the day a Cali-Raison representative filed a legal suit against us for selling fake products. We promptly pulled them off our shelves. Today, 2005, it’s hard to find an American who remembers these funny figurines. You’d be lucky to find them in garage sales, probably better luck at landfills.
So the Cali Raison folks rode in on the fad and made some money. But where are they now? Where is their valuable intellectual property now? Even if they paid small businesses a penny per figurine, they wouldn’t sell it, because it would take valuable shelf space.
Let’s say Korean government actually cracked down on Gucchi fakes. Why would there be any envious Korean women buying that product? The saying is that a person is envious of his neighbor–someone he sees in regular basis. Let me put it in terms you can understand. It’s the “frenzy” of Gucchi that made these people buy Gucchi bags, once when they could afford it. It’s the “Oh I wish I could afford Gucchi… oh I CAN now!” You don’t see any of this, because you are an outsider looking and you are projecting your preconceived view on the situation.
I mean come on, 7 years ago was 1998, 10 years after 1988 Olympics. You probably don’t even realize how much Koreans took that 88 Olympics seriously. So that you can get a perspective, let me say that Koreans named their most advanced tanks, sometimes called “baby M1″ by US servicemen, official name K1-A1 tanks, Type 88. Pal Pal tank was called Pal Pal as a symbol of modernity where the 88 Olympics is suppose to symbolize the turning point in Korean history. So that you can understand how these things go, Beijing is also having an Olympics and that’s exactly how they are seeing it too.
I’ll write more later.
So these products went through numerous distributors and nobody got gouged? How about the purchaser? I’ve seen enough products sold at these markets and compared with other vendors and online sellers to see that the Namdaemun PX black market vendors overprice their products considerably. I’d say around 20% percent more. BTW selling of these products is a violation of the SOFA agreement.
At any rate to say that a box of Ritz or Smuckers Jam is “prohibitively expensive” such as Virtual said is laughable. I’d say the opposite is true in Korea. Even if the prices were double as you say it hardly makes a box of crackers a akin to beluga caviar.
Snack foods here are incredibly cheap relative to the cost of living. Virtual is trying to tell me that despite the fact Korean manufacturers deliberately copied the patented processes, ingredients, packaging and even named their goods in a similar manner these actions are benign because Korean consumers instinctively know they are inferior. Nonsense. These products were copied to save the hard work involved with market research and product development. Until recently most Koreans had never seen a Ritz cracker or MM.
Unlike a Gucci handbag many Koreans would surely buy the more expensive imported US snacks if there were not a knockoff domestic alternative. American manufacturers did lose revenue as a result.
Nothing illustrates Koreans total lack of originality as they way they retail. As soon as one vendor comes up with an original idea swarms of similar vendors open shop next door and thin out the potential customer base. After a while you are stuck with clusters of shops in the same districts pawning the same shit at the same price.
It’s plain stupidity to cite high-end fashion accessories as examples to illustrate how harmless copyright infringement and patent violation are. When the Chinese begin to rip apart their recently purchased Boeing 787s with micrometers and vernier calipers in hand you’ll see what I mean. Sell the house in Seattle.
I’m getting sorta tired of trying to convince you about how things were like in the 80’s, so I beg you to look up information on per capita income and exchange rates during these times.
Just in case you don’t enjoy reading the business section of your paper, the big discussion here was that China would not unpeg it’s yuan. China wanted to keep the value of yuan lower than the value of the US dollar. The reason for doing this is because it helps exports and harms imports. Let’s say you want a nice American car, but you can’t buy it because you happen to be Chinese and when you convert all your hard earned yuan to dollars, you only get a few bucks. Conversely if you are an American trying to buy Chinese microwave, you discover a buck goes a loooooong way in China.
Now back in the 1980’s Koreans had the same mentality, having studied export led growth from the japanese model. In fact, the Chinese are now copying the Koreans/Taiwanese/etc etc. And also, American products were very expensive because generally speaking, the entire world thought American products were best in the world, so the demand for American things were high.
You wrote, “You don??t fire up the oven at Granny??s house and wip up a bunch of Ritzs. Obviously there is a process involved, ingredients and special equipment needed to turn out large quantities of this product.”
Yes. This is true. So are you suggesting that Korea should pay royalty to Great Britain for employing the concept of Industrial Revolution? Or should Korea pay royalty to Ford Motors for using the concept of Mass Production? Are you suggesting that someone at Zec used industrial espionage to steal the secret Ritz baking dough formula to create an exact duplica of Ritz crackers?
Then you wrote, “Being a Western company I??m also sure they went through the proper legal channels and paid for the rights to acquire the technologies needed to go into production without fear of legal action.”
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I’m speechless.
…
Aren’t you the one who told me that there is a difference in copying something exactly and employing same concepts indifferent applications? You are accusing makers of Zec for industrial espionage. To this, I might agree with you if it wasn’t for the fact that the creaters of Zec probably learned the baking art from the Japanese and not the Americans. But the very fact that you automatically assume that “western” companies don’t “copy” is just mind boggling. I’m sure every western steel making interest pay royalty to descendents of Henry Bessemer. (sarcasm off)
You wrote, “Not every company that develops new goods is a large multinational monster. If they are allowed to be simply knocked off the second they hit the market why should they put forth the blood sweat and tears into RD in the first place?”
I agree with you. I’m not saying that we should let everyone copy the minute it hits the street. I’m just asking you to broaden your provincial horizons. Which is why it is unfair that Microsoft should copy Netscape’s internet browser. And IBM unfair for copying Apple. Oh but it’s all so fair this is happening, because it’s all legal. And of course Microsoft wouldn’t go so low as to steel ideas/concepts from open source linux and make it closed so noone can know for sure. And we all know that MS-DOS is the pioneering work of Microsoft Corporation and not some now unknown company. That if there was no patents, there would have been no MS-DOS and no PC and no open source copylefted software, err I mean closed source copyrighted sotwares.
“Patents and brand names protect those who have enough balls and vision to realize a return on what may be years of research and development.”
Yes, this is true. But sometimes patents and brand names protect those who want to hold back progress. That’s what I’m getting at. There is this thing called shades of grey.
That’s why I keep calling you narrow minded, because a jar of Skippy’s WAS like a jar of Belugas.
It’s hard for you to grasp the concept of poverty.
Again… myabe my Cali Raison story was too subtle for you. You wrote, “Unlike a Gucci handbag many Koreans would surely buy the more expensive imported US snacks if there were not a knockoff domestic alternative. American manufacturers did lose revenue as a result.”
That’s true. I’m saying though, if there was no Gucchi fakes, there would not have been a Korean obsession for Gucchi products, and hence no market for Gucchi.
I don’t disagree with your per capita in the 80’s analogy. But really Ritz crackers prohibitavely expensive!! I had to laugh. Are trying to convince me that it is some bizarre twist of fate that a Korean dreamed up a cracker identical to one of the most successful American snacks to hit the U.S. market? If I made a Zec cracker back home and tried to sell at a supermarket there would no less than fifty lawyers picking my bones clean before I sold a crumb.
Why are you speechless? Creating any new product may involve purchasing the rights to employ the use of many currently existing patented equipment or processes.
Forget the silly knockoff Gucci anologies and the industrial revolution etc. All new processes and ideas that someone has taken the effort to develop and register have the right to be protected. If the other guy didn’t have the grey matter to dream it up….tuff.
Think about the thousands of patents involved with making appliances, cars and airplanes.Your idea that China and other countries should be able to slough off international law and copy products that took years to develop is nonsense. Patents don’t last forever and they can be bought and applied.
Steve, once again you wrote, “Nothing illustrates Koreans total lack of originality as they way they retail. As soon as one vendor comes up with a…”
I wrote about this on one of the commentaries long time ago, and i don’t feel like searching through and cut n pasting for your pleasure.
But just so that you are more grounded in the real world, rather than a hypothetical world, think about running a small business. Really. REALLY REALLY think. Let’s say you are a highschool graduate. You don’t have a professional training in nada. You need to feed your family, but luckily you raise some capital by “gaet” system. (you probably don’t know what the heck “gaet” is, but you can look that up yourself) You want to open up a business. What kind of business do you want to run? Where should you open up a shop? How do you want to run your business?
I would love to hear about your original and innovative business idea here.
It’s really really easy to spot what’s wrong with the world. It takes another form of genius to come up with the solution. I don’t have any problems with you pointing out problem with the business strategy of these people. But my problem with your conceit, is that you seem to imply that somehow you can do better.
So again. Don’t assume that “these people” should know better simply because they are retailers. They are just like you, lacking knowledge but needing money to feed the family. What would you do to feed them?
You would probably say stuff like, “I wouldn’t do it right next to each other.” Or “I would sell something out.” Without having try to do this in real life, you probably won’t realize the problem with your “easy” solutions.
I’ll play your game. I guess it’s fun.
“All new processes and ideas that someone has taken the effort to develop and register have the right to be protected.” Like the idea of baking crackers (like many other comapanies do) but making it more buttery and packaging in wax paper and bright red boxes. Indeed. Original. I cannot fathom how much patents they could have possibly put on such a product. Maybe they patented red boxes? Maybe they patented butter in cracker dough? I donno. But obviously Ritz corporation designed and created cracker making machines and all those other cracker manufacturers in the world pay royalties to Ritz corporation. Or. Ritz corporation pays royalty to the true genius who created the machines that makes delicious buttery crackers. Zec on the otherhand, of course, stole the designs for cracker making machines and proceeded to produce crackers without having to pay the original inventer of cracker production. (We will not talk about the concept of Mass Production since you wanted to be specific) Ahh.. only if your paranoia was true that Korea wouldn’t have to buy machines from Germany, Japan, and the US becauset they would be exporting these to the world too. (which was incidentally not the case in 80’s.) Or maybe we should say Ritz crackers are works of art. How unoriginal of Zecs to copy this noble expression of human spirit? Obviously Ritz undertook great risk and business gumption, spending millions on market research to discover that what people really want are buttery crackers in wax paper packaging in red boxes, and how dare, can Zec, copy this great business initiative of Nabisco? Ritz, must oviously be rewarded for this great leap in human progress.
You wrote, “If I made a Zec cracker back home and tried to sell at a supermarket there would no less than fifty lawyers picking my bones clean before I sold a crumb.” No way! People in other countries have different laws and the US laws do not apply to them?!!! What??!! That cant’ be right. Digital Millenium Act (or whatever it’s called) must surely apply to Russians or Swedes or whereever their nefarious servers are residing. Thieves. I tell you. Thieves~~~ and Bandits! How dare they ignore the laws of United States? DOnt’ they know they are really Americans underneath? Anyone who hates taxes are Americans I tell you!
This might come as a shock to you, so get ready:
Often times, those who own patents are not the discoverers, but are blood thirsty business people.
If you play videogames you might know about John Carmack, programmer for DOOM. He is credited for programming algorithm called “Carmack’s Reverse.” Guess who patented that? Carmack just thought he was clever and didn’t patent it, thinking it was common knowledge. Well, blood thirsty Creative Labs had the last laugh…
Whoever came up the LZW Algorithm apparently was on to this sort of thing…I recall reading somewhere there was a court case about it. That’s why whenever you start up Adobe Reader 6.0 or higher, you see, after a list of 50 million US patents, “Contains an implementation of the LZW Algorithm”.
In response to Kushibo’s post #57:
I’ve no idea how many companies are currently selling to the military at preferential rates. I doubt, however, that the number is one. Is it less of a crime if the number of companies is smaller?
The product I mentioned was fish fillets, which are an essentially generic item in the sense that very similar processing techniques are applied by companies to the same raw material. These are purchased by other companies (such as Dongwon, Daerim, or the like), who package and sell them in the same state of processing, or else further continue processing into things like fish sticks before packaging and selling. Korea is not the only market, of course; the company sold to businesses worldwide.
The company that I worked for sold to these entities, as well as selling to the military. Sales that occur through the black market represent lost profit for this company (as well as lost sales to Korean resellers/reprocessors). In this industry there is no need, such as you suggest, to overproduce in order to achieve profitability, since demand outstrips supply.
I ‘m not sure what you mean by these actions ‘not really hurting’, but as I mentioned, the owner’s motivation in discounted military sales was to thank and somehow repay the US government for his success. Why he did it isn’t as material as the fact that he would never have sold at the same price to other customers, and that he didn’t have to. Is criminality defensible so long as it??s ??not really hurting???
VW your hypothetical questions do nothing to buttress your argument nor do your irrelevant analogies. It’s a pretty heavy assumption on your behalf that Nabisco stole the technologies it needed to develop its product lines. You also go off on a weird rant about patenting every action involved with making a product. And you assume I blame retailers for this fiasco when I blame unscrupulous Korean and Asian manufacturers for their knowingly illegal activities.
When you patent something you don’t just make a product and call the whole object
patented. Registered patented processes or equipment are very specific. Patent examiners and judges are accustomed to considering even small, incremental changes as deserving new patents. But to answer your silly question if I were to design a product back home I would need to ensure the product was not in violation of copyright and patent laws before it hit the stores. Why is that so bad?
Patent and copyright laws are not just in place to create monopolies or hoard technology as you think. Many of these laws are in place to protect health and safety of consumers. Patented processes especially with regard to food and medicine have to be approved and proven safe by government standards organizations.
VW cites knockoff pharmaceuticals as harmless. Chinese illegal knockoff drugs are hitting Western markets. Many of these drugs have often been proven to be either ineffective or potentially life threatening. Because they do not conform with our “silly” laws, they have been found to contain substandard materials and even traces of heavy metals.
You say Pepsi blatantly copied Coke. What Pepsi did to Coke is worlds apart from what Chinese and Asian companies are doing with high-end Western name brands. This shows how weak your comparisons really are.
First, Pepsi never said it was Coke. Pepsi didn’t copy product design, logo, and name brand. In reality, despite the fact cola is basically cola. Pepsi had the ambition to deliberately differentiate itself from Coke and even had the “nerve” to say it was better. What Asian companies are doing is making an identical product called Koke, Poke or even Coke etc, making the packaging and often contents identical and selling it at half the cost.
Patent laws work. A good example is Polaroid who for years had the exclusive right to it’s instant film technology. Polaroid’s patent ticked away and Polaroid had time to broaden its product base and other companies had time to ready ways in which to apply Polaroid’s technology when it became available. Last time I saw Polaroid even sells DVD players. If Polaroid had no patent to protect its product’s technology they would have been dead in the water decades ago. Fuji and Polaroid have reached agreements on technology and now share compatible systems. Kodak tried to infringe on Polaroids infringement and it cost them about 1 billion dollars in settlements.
Your fashion accessory analogy does prove one thing. The companies who produce these designer goods have been founded by individuals who often put THEIR very names on the logo or brand name. Copying these brand names clearly shows Asian manufacturers violate both business and private citizens rights not to have their names used without consent. This constitutes more than brand name violation but rather a form of personal forgery.
Don’t try to sell me this notion that American patent laws don’t apply here. These countries who knock off have signed trade agreements not to partake in black marketing and copyright infringement this violates international law and thus their own domestic laws. If the Chinese and Koreans don’t like the West’s stringent trade laws then they can hawk their widgets on Hyundai Porters back home instead of accessing our markets,
“Cheon-won!!!” “Cheon-won!!!” “Cheon-won!!
Legit businessmen make products like this. Later apply for International Patent.
patent for food
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacg.....0020022076
Weird - I came back here to reread the thread, and found that one of my posts is missing! It was between Kushibo’s post #53 (comment-34388) and what is now my #54 (comment-34397). In fact, what is now #54 was a continuation, hence its opening with ‘Furthermore’.
There wasn’t any profanity, it responded directly (though, admittedly, not softly) with what Kushibo wrote, and it was no personal attack on Kushibo (with whom I only sometimes disagree, but have always respected for his knowledge and experience). Was I just censored, or was that a Wordpress issue?
gbnhj — Sorry about that. Due to spam, certain words automatically send comments to my moderation list for approval.
Anyway, it’s up now.
Thanks, and I’m glad you’re using a filter. Looking that post over, it’s not too difficult to figure out which word tripped it.
Ox-tail.
Steve, you lost me. You told me I went off on a tangent, but your examples don’t seem so clear to me. But I hope you do realize that there is a clear difference in laws which is setup to increase economic incentives to foster creativity and development and laws which is setup to grant property rights to entities. The two are not always the one and the same.
I really do feel, that in the interest of humanity, that more open and liberal interpretation of property rights is needed, especially in the field of intellectual property. Furthermore, I concede to you that false advertising IS a crime. But if Zec’s label was Ritz, how is that false advertising? If Zec’s said they are one and the same as Ritz they would be a crime. BUt you insist that Ritz product is original and is patented–I’m not even sure if you can really claim that. How original is Ritz? You are opening up a whole bag of questions here, and quite frankly, I don’t get the feeling that you really thought this through. Hey, you don’t like Koreans fine, but at least be consistant about your stance on intellectual property. And if I don’t honor MPAA and RIAA like you do, well, I guess that makes me a flaming communist.
I for one, cannot imagine how people in India paying the descendents of Habers royalty for using the Haber process to create fertilizers help make the world a better place. And furthermore, I cannot understand how you think that legal system equals to a moral system.
But if you are happy, hey, you are right and I am wrong. Clearly, Zec’s company is a evil and conniving company set out to steal from Ritz and make the world a bad place to live in. I see my errors now. I think it’s clear to everyone that you have won the argument. You are a winner and I, but a loser.
As I know Haitai or Orion (I don??t remember) started chocopie in Korea and then Lotte. And the first to start chocopie in Japan wasn??t Lotte? Wasn??t peppero started by Lotte in Japan? On http//photo.jijisama.org/pakuti01.html I saw some things that were irrelevant like Kia Sorento, Terracan (maybe), Tiburon, Tacuma (maybe), Dolly (that green dragon) if ‘m not wrong and maybe others. I don??t know why criticim against my country is stronger than others that do the same or worse.
No that I agree with that, I’m totaly against. I wish my country had their own originality. But “at least” our products are safe, good and reliable.