There was a thread recently about how to protect IP, and one respondent said that it is too much trouble to worry about protecting IP and a better model is to just sue anybody that steals it. This seemed perhaps naive since there are places where IP rights are not respected and attempts to sue will probably be fruitless. Here is an excerpt from an article in the NY Times that illustrates this:
"The Chinese are adept at copying and quite loose in their interpretation of intellectual property rights. One of Mr. Fishman's more striking examples is the auto industry, which looms large in China's economic plans. American and Japanese companies spend $1 billion to $2 billion to develop a new car. The Chinese, by forcing foreign car companies to form joint ventures with their companies and to share their technology in order to enter China, hope to leapfrog over those kinds of development costs. Foreign companies, salivating at the thought of 100 million Chinese customers, cannot stop themselves from signing on the dotted line. Sometimes, rude surprises await. At the 2003 Shanghai auto show, G.M. executives unveiled a new $9,000 small family van, only to discover an identical vehicle, priced at $6,000, at a Chinese booth in the same row. The clone was made by Chery, a Chinese company owned in part by Shanghai Auto, G.M.'s joint-venture partner. "