An article in the Wall Street Journal today gets to the basics of how China tries to use international laws on patents to steal technology from, claim it as its own, then sue over the claim. This has happened over and over with various companies stealing trade secrets or patented material, then filing patents on the stolen material. If those patents can't be enforced outside China, they certainly will be inside China.
The Journal sites the case of CNEX Labs Inc., based in San Jose, Calif., that Huawei and its Futurewei unit have engaged in a multiyear plan to steal CNEX’s technology. That technology is described this way on their website:
"CNEX is chartered to deliver innovative system solutions in the form of semiconductors and software. For its first product, CNEX teamed with NAND Flash manufacturers and customers to develop a revolutionary new NVMe PCIe SSD controller ASIC that supports LightNVM/Open-Channel operation, and includes native NVMoE I/O connectivity. CNEX SSD controllers deliver high-performance with low and predictable latency, and provide flexibility for software-defined-storage with host-based FTL, and Ethernet I/O for storage fabric scalability."
The Journal describes the technology in less technical terms: "The intellectual property in dispute—solid-state drive (SSD) storage technology—allows massive data centers to manage the ever-growing volume of information generated by artificial intelligence and other advanced applications."
The Chinese will steal anything that looks like chip technology, but this case has a twist. The patent holder of this technology worked for both Futurewei and CNEX. The Chinese company tried to get him to sign over the patents as part of an employee agreement but that was a little far fetched and he refused. In its filing, "As part of the discovery process, Huawei asked the court in a filing earlier this month to force CNEX to turn over all of its technical documents, including “detailed engineering specifications, testing plans, source code design documents, source code flow charts, hardware design documents and schematics, hardware and software bug status reports, engineering personnel responsibility designations, client product delivery details, and production schedules.” A protective order entered by the judge places heavy restrictions on access to the technical documents in the case." How is that for brazenness? Give us the designs and technical data so we can evaluate your claim!
The kicker in all of this is the way China has managed to steal and patent so much technical information, then use patents filed in both China and other countries to leverage the theft. They used this method in solar panels, the aircraft industry, and control software for many years. They got caught trying to steal GE engine technology last month.
China operates commerce more like a criminal enterprise than a duly constituted government.
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