I’m not saying IP theft should be condoned or nurtured but by you logic, if every car companies MUST legitimately re-invent the wheel from scratch, then I’m afraid the competition that you hope for may Never come as the company who owns the patent will always be ahead. The only way there’s competition is if multiple companies catches up and must innovate in order to stay in the game. China is just arriving at that innovation junctions where it MUST go from copying to innovating and right then someone tries to remove her from the competition. Well maybe it’s a good thing, as it’ll force China to innovate earlier but as consumers, we’re quite unlucky to be caught in this era
I'm sorry that is jut not what IP means. No we shouldn't hold them accountable for making EVs because someone else made them first, but if they stole the software/hardware schematics and then used them to get a leg up the whole product is tainted.
It's not that they are copying, it's that they are stealing the inner workings and information directly. Seeing a car, and looking at it and poking around in it them immitating it with your own style is fine....but if you steal all the work done in the background, all the schematics, all the troubleshooting, and you match it identically, or so close then just paint it different...it's theft. The definitions are clear.
The real issue with competition is both IP theft being a false illegal competition, and anti trust laws failing to allow small corps to come up while the big guys are trying to stomp on them. It has failed because the big guys are way way too big and can stomp them so effectively. China should have to build up their internal knowledge of these things, or pay for the products. Not steal the knowledge and create knockoffs, or their own products based on things that are patented.