Trade show raids

Patent infringement is really getting out of control in this business.

Last week in Hannover, Germany, the CeBIT trade show ended with a police raid on the exhibit hall prompted by rampant claims of intellectual property theft. Nearly 200 cops searched 50 booths — about half of which belonged to Chinese vendors, with 12 from Taiwan and nine from Germany. Almost 70?devices were confiscated by the authorities, who said the raid was just the continuation of a trend at the annual show.

Is this sort of thing going to become the norm at industry trade shows? It makes you wonder. …

As the final day of XYZ World winds down, a SWAT team rappels from the ceiling to the show floor, cuffing booth magicians and yelling with guns drawn, “Put down the iPhone! Now!” Marketing execs clog the bathrooms, flushing chips and components down toilets, stuffing circuit boards down their pants. A stranger turns to you and asks nervously, “Could you hold my tote bag for a minute?” Specially trained dogs sniff around the breath mint dish for unoriginal technology and copycat designs.

Instead of catching their flights home, exhibitors sit it out in a jail cell downtown; clad in khakis and name badges, they trade their sad tales: “What are you in for?” “Integrating VoIP into a GPS mapping app — well, that and arson. How ‘bout you?” “Battery. We copied someone else's handset battery design.”

Face it: No matter how “aggressive” the product marketing manager claims to be, he's not going to last a day in general population. Must it come to this? Whatever happened to just suing someone and waiting a few years for a settlement check?

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