Consumer Technology World Brief
What was once a form for companies to protect their intellectual property is now involving countries as they form their own patent-acquisition companies with the goal of helping domestic technology firms and possibly making some money in the process. Countries that have taken such steps involve South Korea, France, China and Japan. The beginning of state-sponsored intellectual property dealers adds a fresh geopolitical element to the debate about patent trolls and how to protect legitimate inventions without stifling innovation. It could also complicate efforts to improve global cooperation on trade-related matters such as online piracy and computer security.
Countries around the world are eager to strengthen their patent punch. The Innovation Network Corp of Japan, a joint public-private investment company, launched a fund in 2010 to acquire and license life sciences patents. China, meanwhile, has plans to set up around 20 IP “investment service platforms,” along with exploring a joint government-industry-university patent funding model and extending pilot programs for patent insurance. However how these so called patent acquisition companies operate is yet to be seen. Will they go after everyone or only those who have initiated patent litigation against their home grown companies? Only once their operational plan is clear will we be able to predict the landscape of the actual intellectual property war that is taking place at the moment.
North America Regional Review
The Senate on Saturday narrowly passed its first federal budget in four years, a move that will usher in a relative lull in Washington’s fiscal wars until an anticipated summer showdown over raising the debt ceiling. Four Democratic senators facing re-election in 2014 joined all Senate Republicans in opposing the measure, which seeks to raise nearly USD 1 trillion in new tax revenues by closing few tax breaks for the wealthy. The House of Representatives approved a Senate-passed bill to avert a government shutdown next week that also provides the military and some domestic agencies more flexibility in dealing with the USD 85 billion in automatic spending cuts.
Congress quietly tucked in a new cyber-espionage review process for U.S. government technology purchases into the funding law signed this week by President Barack Obama, reflecting growing U.S. concern over Chinese cyber-attacks. The law prevents NASA, and the Justice and Commerce Departments from buying information technology systems unless federal law enforcement officials give their OK. U.S. imports a total of about USD 129 billion worth of “advanced technology products” from China, according to a May 2012 report by the Congressional Research Service. This measure is taken amidst all the cyber terrorism attacks allegations targeted at China.
Asia Regional Review
Economic growth in China faces an uphill challenge as it comes to terms with its population and declining productivity. Buoyant Chinese growth helped support the global economy after recessions in the United States and Europe, and a significant slowdown in China could dent output, employment and corporate profits around the world. The slowing was inevitable, although boosting Chinese education to get more kids through high school could offset this slowdown. Most people would probably agree that the Chinese economy cannot maintain the extremely rapid growth rates it has seen over the past three decades indefinitely. The question is thus not whether the Chinese economy will slow but by when and by how much. With 80 percent of the working age population already employed, there is limited room for employment growth to contribute strongly to economic activity in the future.
In China, internet penetration has grown massively in the last decade – from 4.6% in 2002 to 42.1% in 2012. Microblogging site Sina Weibo only launched in 2010, but it now has 300 million users and about 100 million messages are sent daily. It clearly plays an important role in the discourse surrounding current events in China. The Chinese government seems to require Chinese companies to maintain internal censorship regimes. Topics where mass removals happen the fastest are those that combine events that are hot topics across Sina Weibo, topics that are generally considered sensitive. If Sina Weibo had insufficient controls, the government may take action against the company. If their controls were too rigid, users might abandon them for one of their competitors. Its success implies that it has found a happy medium, and that is what makes it an interesting social media platform to study
Europe Regional Review
Major UK banks must raise a total of £25bn in extra capital by the end of 2013 to guard against potential losses, the Bank of England (BoE) has said. In a statement, the BoE’s Financial Policy Committee (FPC) said only some banks need to raise the cash, but did not name them. It said banks could face losses of about £50bn over the next three years, relating to bad loans and fines. The FPC said capital raising measures were also designed to ensure that banks were able to continue lending to businesses and each other, should another banking crisis hit. The extra capital was needed “to ensure sufficient capacity to absorb losses and sustain lending”, the FPC said. The FPC has overall responsibility for financial regulation in the UK and is part of a new order of regulation designed to keep the banks under closer scrutiny.
Cyprus, one of the smallest members of the European Union, has become the latest high-profile casualty of the long-running Eurozone crisis. A bailout deal worth 10bn euros (USD 13bn or £8.5bn) was proposed with the EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the last week of March that involved an extremely unpopular one-off levy on people’s bank savings. After several negotiations and discussions a deal has been agreed that involves significant restructuring of its banking sector, along with other measures such as tax rises and privatizations designed to raise billions towards the bailout, but protect bank customers with deposits of 100,000 euros or less. Cyprus may well also introduce international capital controls, to head off a collapse of the entire Cypriot banking system. In other words, people may not be allowed to transfer their money out of a Cypriot bank account into, say, a German bank account, in which case they may also have to bar people from ferrying bulging suitcase-loads of euro banknotes on flights to Athens. So the litmus test for Cyprus may be what happens over the coming months. If the economy stabilizes, and the finances of the Cypriot banks and government start to look manageable again, confidence should return and the capital controls may be safely removed.