By James B. Kelleher
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. manufacturers that have set up shop in China are adopting a variety of strategies to protect their copyrights and intellectual property, from building extra walls in their plants to removing the hard drives from plant computers.
Some have taken their disputes to Chinese courts and prevailed -- a sign officials there are beginning to take the problem of infringement seriously -- while others have decided to try to outrace the pirates, introducing new products and improving processes faster than they can be copied, executives told the Reuters Manufacturing Summit in New York this week.
"As a company, you just have to move and create fast enough to stay ahead of the competition," said Jim Griffith, chief executive of Timken Co. (TKR.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), a Canton, Ohio-based maker of bearings and alloy steel.
RISK VERSUS REWARD
The mania among U.S. companies in recent years to get into China has been moderated by their fear of that country's reputation as a place where products of all types -- from movies to software, from pharmaceuticals to sophisticated manufacturing processes -- get copied by rivals with near impunity.
In the rush to get into China in the 1990s, many companies did what Timken did, only exporting its lowest technology products to the country, which was struggling to catch up with the industrialized West.
But as China's fast-maturing industrial economy has become more and more sophisticated, many companies have decided they have to put their best products into the market.
"Protecting it is a challenge," Griffith said of intellectual property, or IP. "But sharing it creates the opportunity." Continued...
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