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| China tech | |
| Thursday, 24 August 2006 | |
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Most inventions are patented. These patents mean that if you want to make a version of an invention you have to pay the inventor a fee. This is an old system designed to ensure that creators are properly compensated for their work. Computer hardware is patented to the hilt. The massive research and development costs involved in producing processors and all the other weird bits inside computers ensures this. It costs billions to make a new technology. Patents add cost to computers. This cost is in addition to the cost of manufacture and distribution. It's a cost of patents, inventor fees and the legal teams necessary to protect the patents a company already holds. Some say that patents are preventing computers getting to people in developing nations. They add that extra $10 or $20 (or $100) dollars to the price tag that means little in the USA or the UK but is a killer for a family in China with a total income of $200 per month. The Chinese government seems to agree that patents are a bad thing. It largely ignores them. It even funds research into projects that steal patents. A good example is the Godson processor for personal computers. The Godson processor is roughly the same as the little Intel or AMD chip that makes most computers work. It runs operating systems like GNU/Linux. It's cheap. It was made in China. Sounds good so far. But...the Godson processor is actually a design based on something called the MIPS processor. The MIPS processor is a computer processor developed in the USA. The researchers in Chinese universities who developed the Godson reverse engineered the MIPS processor without paying for the technology. This drove the US owners pretty mad. They lobbied the US government who in turn pointed out to the Chinese government that infractions of international patent law were occurring. The Chinese government – who funded the research into the Godson to a large degree – merely shrugged and ignored the issue. Tut tut. What we have here is a classic case of a developing nation blatantly stealing technology from a developed nation and refusing to pay any compensation. It's not often you see something that sneaky. In historical terms perhaps the most direct comparison is that of a break-away colony called the United States of America. A long time ago the world was run by rather large and creaky European empires and a shaky new ex-colony was trying to find its feet. One way it did this was to ignore patent law and copyright law. This allowed American companies to quickly adopt technology and information and present it to their home market. They saved a fortune on research and development and gained a little competitive edge that allowed their emerging businesses to grow. Cheapness. That is the key. In China most people have the purchasing power of a Catholic priest in rural Ireland. By stealing an American processor design the Chinese market gets a billion dollar reduction in research and development costs. That returns in lower production costs. These are multiplied by the inherent simplicity of the design, which means it's not expensive to make. A Godson computer costs about as much as a mobile phone to produce. The first attempt at commercialising this processor is from a company called YellowSheepRiver in Macou with a product called the Fitness computer. The idea is to produce a native Chinese computer that does not rely on external hardware or software. A self-sufficient technology for the average Chinese family. The Fitness computer will cost less that a weekend out in London. That's going to be a month of wages for someone in China (at least) but suddenly the computer is a realistic proposition for parents who want their child to touch the world. It's an interesting development. If someone actually has the guts to mass produce that computer (and risk the wrath of Intel, AMD, Microsoft, IBM, Sun and everyone else) then it might just work out. It's pretty hard to sue a Chinese company in China who have stolen an American patent that the Chinese government don't care about. I'm not sure where I stand on this issue. I see two things. One is that a lot of companies are pretty greedy in their pricing and have done little to introduce machines that are genuinely affordable in developing nations. I don't approve of that. The other is that stealing designs and claiming them as your own is a pretty lousy way to do with engineering or business. It's hardly going to foster long term trust or market stability. I don't approve of that either. Perhaps we are all being a bit too dogmatic. Why haven't Intel already introduced computers for $150 dollars in developing nations? It's impossible to imagine a normal Chinese family saving $400 or more dollars together for a computer. It's ridicules, unfair and unnecessary to expect hundreds of millions of families to get that sort of money together. From another perspective it's unfair that the Chinese government have allowed international patent law to be subverted in the production of a computer system like the Godson. It's unnecessary. Sun Microsystems have an open processor architecture called the SPARC which anyone can copy free of charge. By facilitating the stealing of the MIPS processor the Chinese technology industry has upset a lot of people. It'd be nice if everyone could cool down a little, be a little less greedy, and cooperate in a realistic fashion around some key economic indicators. Rather than shareholder revenue we might need to examine individual spending power in developing nations, and build some computers for those markets (Intel is starting to do this in India). Rather than attempting industrial espionage we might consider trusting our native engineers to create effective systems, or in using processors that are already open. When it comes down the brass tacks we're in a world with over six billion people, and over five billion of these people are pretty disenfranchised. Something will have to be done to alleviate that, and it would all work out a lot better if that something was cooperative rather than confrontational. |
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