[indthkr]

"Go to the US patent office website. I found out so much about how the competition does things, it isn’t even funny.

The rest of the world has caught up with us. There is very little we can do to stop foreign countries from making and copying our stuff for their own purposes.

However patents and trademarks do allow us to stop foreign entities from counterfeiting and selling our ideas back to us for US dollars.

Ever wonder what our balance of trade with China would be if we sent them a bill for all the IP they've ripped-off over the past 10 years?

[factoryrat]

Unfortunately, a lot of the stuff they counerfeit does end up on the US market, and they’re working their way up the food chain with the products they copy. I had to replace a hydraulic valve the other night, and the replacement part was a chinese brand that was identical to the German brand it replaced. The only difference I could find was the logo on the nameplate. It failed in service after less than 2 days, due to internal leakage. A call to the German company confirmed that they have been dealing with these counterfeits for a while, and told us what to look for when buying their products.