The United States Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer, initiated an “investigation” of China's trade practices, having alleged that China is engaging in intellectual property violation. There's a process called TRIPS, the point of which is to get these intellectual property matters into the general trade agreements. I've many a time therefore said that we should just ignore IP rip off by very poor places on two different grounds. Secondly, we'd very much like very poor places to become richer places, their stealing IP is one of the things that will make them so. On the other hand rich places should cough up and cough up in full.

Source: Forbes August 19, 2017 15:45 UTC