Ship Out Jobs and Ship Out Intellectual Property

Giving Away Intellectual Property

Recently, American businesses have been complaining that their production processes and intellectual property are being stolen by Asisn manufacurters. This is evidenced by the high volume of counterfeit goods coming out of China and, to a lesser extent, other Asian countries.

However their complaints have to be mitigated by the fact that when businesses decide to open their manufacturing processes off shore they need to assess the risk of having their proprietary processes stolen. Any business decision requires an assessment of risk. Complaining that they are being counterfeited means that they did not do a proper risk assessment, or they believed that the government would bail them out.

The choice of a manufacturing site must include an evaluation of the intellectual property protections at the off-shore site. Any company that did not know that China has limited respect for intellectual property did not do its due diligence properly and deserves what it gets.