It should come as no secret or surprise to you that the Chinese are not known for having great respect for intellectual property laws. For years, they've flooded the world with bootleg music CDs, video games, DVDs, etc. They've also cloned popular pieces of high-tech gadgetry, such as the iPod. Korea and Japan were known for doing the same thing in prior decades. However, Korea and Japan were chased down by American (and other) intellectual property attorneys and eventually stopped (or at least radically decreasde) their efforts to pirate high tech inventions. In fact, they soon developed the expertise to develop and improve on those inventions, doing our own inventors one better in many cases.

There is a great deal of effort being poured into stopping the flood of illegal Chinese copies into the rest of the world. That pressure will inevitably give the pirates pause, and cause them to consider producing truly innovative goods as the Japanese and Koreans did before them. With China's abundant human and natural resources, they'll have the ability to crank out their goods more cheaply and in more quantity than perhaps any nation on Earth.

That's what I mean when I say that American industry could be shooting itself in the foot. By chasing down the Chinese outfits that are reverse engineering and cloning products like the Apple iPod and iPhone, they are in fact pushing the Chinese to develop their own technological expertise and design know-how. There is evidence, in fact, that this may already be happening.

Consider the Meizu miniOne, a phone patterned after the Apple iPhone. It's not a knock-off, per se. It doesn't run OS X, but Linux (or Windows CE according to some reports). It doesn't pretend to be an Apple product. Its specifications are impressive. The screen is 3.32 inches versus Apple's 3.5. Its resolution is 720x480 (standard DVD resolution) versus Apple's 320x480 (VHS resolution). The miniOne will be offered in 4, 8, and 16GB sizes. It will feature a 3 megapixel camera versus Apple's 2 megapixel camera. It will be the same thickness as the iPhone, but shorter and narrower. It doesn't use the potentially problematic MultiTouch display but a standard touchscreen.

Why is the miniOne significant? Consider several key points about it. First, it isn't just a feature-by-feature clone of Apple's iPhone. It's actually a different technology, utilizing design concepts inspired by the iPhone. But it also goes the iPhone one better. It will include a user-removable battery and a variety of functions the iPhone doesn't offer, such as the ability to work on any wireless carrier's network. Since I haven't gotten to play with an iPhone or a miniOne, I can't offer more of a comparison than the links I've provided above, but I can tell you that given the choice between a miniOne and an iPhone, I'd rather have the miniOne hands down. Regardless of whether it's based on Linux or Windows Mobile, I'll have much better odds finding and installing any apps I want on the miniOne.

If the Chinese can continue to innovate in this way, they won't need to be "cloning" our products in the near future. We'll want them because they're actually better...