Mei Guan Xi（没关系）

No need to reprise the lack of intellectual property in China - but I’ve always thought (as many people much smarter than I) that when the day comes that domestic companies have IP to protect, it’ll become a focus.

Remarkably, I’ve been seeing a slew of IP court cases recently such as Ctrip (think travelocity) suing Qunar (think kayak) for literally crawling Ctrip users’ hotel reviews - essentially syndicating content without paying. And Dianping (think citysearch and zagats and yelp) suing Aibang for basically the same thing - in which case dianping won. Lastly, Sohu (major portal) by Shanda (major online game publisher) for republishing online novels.

Blatant ripoffs are still a plenty - I can’t even count on my hands and feet how many facebook ripoffs are other here (copying the entire site and sometimes even forgetting to change logos!) but it’s a small sign of progress.

It’s not really ethics driving the change but I think people feel like they’ve work hard to build something and want to protect it. Who’d thunk it?

UPDATE: looks like Qunar just lost and will have to stop infringing! Though the penalty is a paltry RMB 1,000. Doh! but it’s progress!