Posts in China

Future Motion launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the earliest prototypes of the OneWheel on January 6th, 2014. Within 24 hours, the project had already collected 40 percent of the funds it needed for the next phase of development. Within three days, it had secured 85 percent of its funding request and it only took a total of four days to reach the $100,000 pledge goal that Future Motion had initially set out to achieve. All told, Future Motion received a total in excess of $630,000 within 25 days and was able to meet stretch goals for LED lighting systems and mobile app development.

Chinese legislators have attempted to enact anti-terror legislation purportedly designed to protect Chinese citizens against terrorist threats. In late December, China passed a law requiring both telecommunications and Internet companies operating in the country to provide decryption, technical interfaces and other assistance to public and state security organizations to conduct investigations of potential terrorist activities. The tech sector has misgivings about Chinese regulations that would force the handing over of sensitive data. Imagine a leak of encryption keys leading Chinese hackers to degrade performance of a foreign tech provider, all in the name of promoting indigenous innovation. That’s a pretty extreme scenario, but one that’s not completely unimaginable considering recent cybersecurity headlines.

Although the Chinese Patent Law is a mere 31 years old, it has already gone through 3 major revisions, the last being 6 years ago. In its most recent effort, China just released the “Draft 4th Amendments to the Chinese Patent Law” for public comments, which are due by Jan 1, 2016. The proposed amendments will significantly strengthen areas such as patent enforcement and broaden design patent protection.

With the nearly $1 billion drop in Caterpillar’s 2015 revenue forecast, the corporation has recently announced a corporate restructuring in its dealer and customer support divisions, including new divisions in global aftermarket solutions, marketing and digital as well as wear components & aftermarket distribution. Despite the issues, the corporation still has a heavy research and development presence. It earned 488 patents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2014, placing it 88th overall among all companies petitioning the USPTO for patents that year; this figure was an incredible 47 percent higher than Caterpillar’s 2013 U.S. patent levels. Caterpillar’s 2014 patent earnings were much greater than heavy industry rivals Deere & Company (NYSE:DE) and Komatsu Ltd (TYO:6301), organizations which earned 214 and 132 U.S. patents in 2014 respectively. In the three months leading up to this writing, Caterpillar earned 170 U.S. patents, a quarterly pace that would see them increase the amount of patents earned in 2015 if maintained.

The current state-of-the-art in nuclear power plant reactor design and construction is known as Generation III+. These reactors are essentially safer versions of the Generation III reactors that began operation in 1996 starting with the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa commercial plant in Japan. Generation III+ reactors must operate within very strict safety guidelines. The power plant’s structure must be durable enough to withstand a plane crash without releasing radiation. Power plants must operate for periods of 60 years. The grace period after reactor shutdown, during which time no human intervention is required, must be 72 hours. Further, the risk of core melt accidents must be low enough that a risk assessment analysis returns a calculated core damage frequency (CDF) of 1×10-4 per year.

Territoriality has been a difficult aspect of public international law to apply to the Internet and information technology sectors. It’s a central aspect of the current flap between Google and CNIL, which wants Google to remove listings purged under the right to be forgotten from its main Google.com domain, which Google sees as its American property. Another issue discussed at the conference include the need to finalize safe harbor privacy principles which would establish rules for U.S. or European Union businesses which store customer data, bridging the gap between differences in data privacy standards in the two jurisdictions.

In 2013, 647,300 industrial design registrations were filed – a 6.4% drop from 2012. The decline in global registrations stems primarily from the slow-down of Chinese manufacturing, which produced 12% fewer registrations than the previous year. After seven years of consecutive growth, 2013’s global registrations of 919,100 designs represents a 3.3% decrease from 2012. In 2013, upwards of three million industrial design registrations were in force.

When you think about the american auto industry it’s becoming clearer every day that the idea of American-made or Japanese-made is not black and white. Increasingly, the innovative technologies going into the vehicles being sold in our country are also coming from overseas. It’s pretty telling that industry data indicates that there are no truly American-made cars being sold anymore. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s 2015 American Automobile Labeling Act (AALA) report shows that the cars constructed with the most American parts still had foreign parts used in at least one-quarter of the vehicle’s construction. Most of the cars that were three-quarters composed of American parts were made by General Motors Company, including the Buick Enclave, the Cadillac CTS and the Chevrolet Corvette.

Both Korea and China are major players on the global patent stage, and the leading companies of these countries file and obtain thousands of patents annually. But it seems increasingly clear that the governments of these countries are attempting to support their domestic companies via antitrust enforcement to lower the price of access to patented technologies of foreign competitors.

There’s one very important limitation to note when talking about the Lexus hoverboard: it can only be operated across a track which has a metal layer running across beneath the surface. On most roads, skate parks and handrails, this product would drop like a brick. It’s held aloft by magnetic forces strong enough to keep the board four inches in the air. Depending on a rider’s weight, the board hovers between one and two inches off of the ground. The magnets gain enough force to do this with the help of superconductors that are cooled to about -321°F with the help of liquid nitrogen, which creates a vapor trail of exhaust coming from the hoverboard that makes for an interesting added effect.

In 2012, the global robotics industry saw a total of $26.8 billion in economic activity, according to Bloomberg Business. Much of this was focused in the field of heavy industrial robotics, as was pointed out in a video segment produced by the business news publisher, but robotics for consumers are expected to become a much larger sector in the next…

Everybody has to be careful because you’re right if we undermine our patent system that is the only thing that allows America to remain strong competitively because China they just have labor rates that are a fraction of ours. We couldn’t possibly make products as cheaply as China. We need to make sure that Congress isn’t hearing so much about how bad the patent system is that they without intention undermine it in significant part and then hurt our competitive advantage against China. I mean that’s all possible. I agree. I share that concern. Are we going too far?

The first Chinese shipments of the S60 Inscription are not expected to be high in volume. Volvo expects to ship 1,500 units to the U.S. in 2015 and 5,000 in following years, according to remarks made by Volvo CEO Håkan Samuelsson this April. 2015 sales levels of the Volvo S60 base model for the luxury sedan have only reached 8,884 units through mid-June, a figure that was down 13 percent from sales figures for the same time period in 2014. This low shipment volume is also likely to temper the skepticism which is expected from American consumers who will face the prospects of the first significant Chinese vehicle on the American market.

Global innovation continued to climb during 2014 but at the slowest pace seen since the global economic recession hit in 2009. The Reuters report didn’t draw any specific conclusions as to why the innovation slowdown had occurred but did draw a correlation between published scientific literature and patenting activities, noting that the former typically precedes the latter by three to five years. As graphs published in the Reuters study clearly show, scientific literature publications in 12 industries increased between 2008 and 2009 at a slower rate than prior years, mirroring the patenting slowdown experienced this year. Troublingly, a steep drop in published scientific literature was experienced in 2010, so if this model holds we may see a reduction in global patenting activity when the annual Reuters innovation study comes out next year.

The first ever CES Asia took place between May 25th and 27th in Shanghai, China. The inaugural industry event showcased the many different technologies that will be entering China’s consumer market in the coming months and years. The three-day exposition was the first Chinese technology trade show coordinated with the Consumer Electronics Association since 2012. More than 200 companies came from 15 countries to display emerging consumer technologies from knockoff versions of Google Glass to home cinema technologies. The forecasts for the Chinese consumer market for emerging technologies would give any technology developer reason to believe that nothing but fair weather awaits them in that country.