This priority was personally negotiated by Zhu Jinglun at that time, in order to attract Schneider to set up a factory in Daming, and at the same time, in order to let Schneider accept the conditions of shareholding, Schneider was specially given preferential policies. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

However, the arsenal presided over by Hao Kejiu did not intend to recognize this priority, which caused a huge conflict with the giant Schneider, and the two sides were deadlocked.

In fact, the relationship between the arsenal and Schneider company in the past few years is still relatively harmonious, because the first railway line in the Ming Dynasty, the Guangzhou-Kowloon Railway is the technical staff of the arsenal in the operation, the railway operation, it is inevitable to produce various failures, there are a large number of regular maintenance work and maintenance work, the need to regularly replace damaged parts, and these parts arsenal has no production experience, so the first three years of the operation of the Guangzhou-Kowloon Railway, mainly to purchase Schneider parts.

However, the arsenal has a problem, that is, it does not let go of any interests, and Schneider feels that he is a unique business, and the price of parts and components is very high, only slightly lower than the equipment parts produced in Europe, but their costs cannot be compared with European factories at all, Schneider's factory in Daming, not only has a low tax rate (a ten-year tax exemption), low labor wages, and even the cost of raw materials is much lower than that in Europe, plus the long-distance freight and high insurance premiums shipped from Europe to Daming, it can be said that Schneider's profits in Daming, at least twice as high as its European counterparts, quite a windfall profit.

Seeing that this kind of huge profits continue to slip away from his hands, Hao Kejiu is impossible to accept, he instructed the arsenal to produce by itself, imitating Schneider's technology, so from the fourth year, the arsenal can also provide some parts to the Guangzhou-Kowloon Railway, and soon the arsenal even imitated the heavy equipment such as railway locomotives, and there is no need for Schneider to supply at all.

At this time, the conflict broke out between the two giant companies, and the previous politeness was completely gone, blaming each other.

Schneider was able to tolerate the Arsenal copying their technology before, mainly because the Arsenal was the only customer of their railway machinery and equipment, but the other party's actions of completely excluding themselves from the Daming Railway Market made Schneider completely unacceptable, so he sued the Arsenal in court.

At this time, the problem came, Schneider sued the arsenal for infringing their patented technology, but Daming did not have a patent law at all.

As a result, the lawsuit lasted for a long time, and Schneider never won.

Westerners will not be rash, and they have been entangled in lawsuits for a long time, which seriously affects the company's business, and they have been silent for a while, but soon they can no longer sit still.

Because the Ming Dynasty began to build a new railway, the Guangjiang Railway. Compared with the replacement equipment market of the Guangzhou-Kowloon Railway, it is obvious that the new railway is the real big cake, this 900-kilometer railway line, in the West can cross a country's ultra-long line, the need for rails, locomotives, and even ordinary road studs are a huge market.

This time Schneider decided to give up his previous suspicions with the arsenal, they lowered their posture, and did not intend to pursue the old accounts of the arsenal infringing their patents, but hoped to jointly contract the railway equipment business with the arsenal, Schneider saw that without the cooperation of the arsenal, they may not be able to make a profit on the Guangjiang railway, because the technicians who built the Guangjiang railway are all from the arsenal, and the railway will still be operated by the arsenal in the future.

Although the arsenal copied a large number of railway equipment, but for this kind of large-scale railway construction, they could not meet the demand, so they reconciled with Schneider, and the two sides cooperated to contract all the equipment orders for this railway, and each obtained half of the business.

But the honeymoon period between the two was too short, and Hao Kejiu did not intend to abide by the agreement, and the reason why he gave Schneider half of the business was because the arsenal could not meet all the orders for the equipment of the railway. But the construction period of this railway was very long, and the manufacturing capacity of the arsenal continued to expand, and soon Hao Kejiu was not satisfied with only taking half of the business. He began to secretly instruct the acceptance technicians, pick the thorns in Schneider's equipment, and various problems from the railroad tracks to the locomotives continued, so he terminated Schneider's business contract in the second half of the term.

The legal system of foreigners is obviously more sound, and they are also accustomed to using legal means to protect their own interests, and the lawsuit between the two companies has started again, but although Hao Kejiu's means are not glorious, but they can't find fault, and the railway company is worried about the quality of Schneider's equipment, so that Schneider can't grasp the handle at all, and the qualified rate of industrial products in this era cannot reach 100 percent, and you must be able to pick the problem.

Schneider suffered a dumb loss on the Guangjiang Railway, and for a while even wanted to withdraw from the Daming Railway market, but it was the Ministry of Industry that mediated to keep a small part of Schneider's business, so that they could not make up their minds.

After suffering this dumb loss, Schneider did not intend to admit the account, they began to secretly connect, in those years France went back to the word, lost the Franco-Prussian War, the French government was completely unable to make decisions for Schneider, they could only unite some Western companies that had suffered similar losses in Daming, the most was the French silk reeling machine, silk loom manufacturers, in the Ming told the development of the silk weaving industry, machinery and equipment are mainly imitation of French equipment, the machinery manufacturers in the Lyon Silk Chamber of Commerce have long been dissatisfied with this, British cotton yarn and looms also began to be copied by the Ming Arsenal, so the British were also dissatisfied with this.

Therefore, Schneider's allies have become more and more, from the Lyon Silk Association to the Manchester Chamber of Commerce in the United Kingdom, they have all submitted their pleas to the Ming government, but they have been shelved and dismissed.

Schneider's anger was ignited by the railway plan just announced by the Ming Dynasty, from which Schneider saw a huge amount of benefits, and he was once again ready to reconcile with the arsenal, and at the same time proposed to share at least a third of the market, and demanded that the arsenal must strictly abide by the agreement.

However, in recent years, the development of the arsenal has been too rapid, stimulated by the annual average of 10 million taels of silver orders from the Manchu Qing and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the profits of the arsenal have risen steadily, and the profits of the Manchu Qing Dynasty in the year of manufacturing imitation Krupp cannons and producing ten ironclad ships for the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom are as high as 10 million taels.

A large amount of profits can not be kept under the cub, the arsenal implements the account sharing system of Rishengchang, an account period is four years, so these profits will remain in the accounts of the arsenal for four years, Rishengchang's method is to use these profits to continue to invest in business, Rishengchang's business is to lend, and the business of the arsenal is production, so Hao Kejiu will continue to invest this money to expand production, especially he saw the huge profits of the railway industry from the Guangzhou-Kowloon Railway, and thought that the railway industry is promising. Therefore, in recent years, a considerable part of the funds have been invested in expanding the production of railway equipment.

As a result, Hao Kejiu thinks that the arsenal can eat the upcoming big railway orders alone, and he doesn't want Schneider to earn a penny, isn't it just a lawsuit, isn't it just a protest to the Ming government, the arsenal is a government-run industry, and it is the government's own, and he is afraid of a lawsuit with foreigners?

Thinking that he had nothing to fear, Hao Kejiu refused Schneider's request for a piece of the pie and did not plan to cooperate with Schneider.

Stimulated by huge interests, Schneider couldn't go crazy without going crazy, and this time they finally used all their resources, such as those of the French government.

With the withdrawal of the Prussian army from France, France finally breathed a sigh of relief, quickly rebuilt the army, thought that it was a strong country again, and became strong diplomatically again, the French consul could finally stand up for the French enterprise, they united with the British consul who was dissatisfied with the imitation machine of the Ming Dynasty, and jointly sent a note to the Ming Foreign Affairs Department, asking the Ming to face up to this kind of infringement on the technology of Western companies, and urge the Ming Dynasty to formulate relevant laws to protect the legitimate property rights of Western companies.

Britain and France have a very tough attitude this time, France claims that if the Ming does not face up to the bad behavior of its own enterprises, France will impose special tariffs on the raw silk exported by the Ming Dynasty to make up for the losses of French machinery merchants; Britain has threatened to reintroduce tariffs on tea.

The two countries are considered to have hit the key point of the Ming Dynasty, and the two leading export industries of the Ming Dynasty are tea and raw silk.

This level of diplomatic incidents naturally alarmed Zhu Jinglun, in fact, he has always known the behavior of the arsenal, and he also knows that what the arsenal does is indeed not authentic, Hao Kejiu has been in charge of the arsenal for several years, and he generally recognizes it, but it is one point, this person's attitude towards interests is not consistent with his philosophy.

Zhu Jinglun did not expect this factory to make money, his purpose at that time was to cultivate a group of talents who understood Western science and technology for the Ming Dynasty, and hoped to introduce Western science and technology through the arsenal.

After investing at least more than 20 million taels of silver, the arsenal was pushed out and Hao Kejiu was allowed to carry out reforms.

The reform was successful, and the government threw out this burden, but Zhu Jinglun's goal of technology diffusion through the arsenal was never achieved, but Hao Kejiu ran the arsenal into a monopoly giant. This kind of giant, not only did not transfuse blood for the Ming private industry, but entered the private market like a wild boar, squeezing the fragile private industry to the point of difficulty. Even the money in the brick burning industry, the arsenal earns, it is too greedy.

But Zhu Jinglun strongly supported the arsenal's imitation of Western machines, so he acquiesced in the unfair competition between the arsenal and Schneider.

But he was really a little ashamed, because he personally promised to give Schneider priority, and now it seems that he was very inconsiderate back then, he didn't expect Daming to be able to imitate the heavy machinery of railway equipment so quickly. But the original promise was given by himself, and he was really hard to talk about this matter.

As for the issue of patent protection required by Britain and France, this is also a matter of loss, and it is indeed a matter of loss if you imitate other people's technology and do not give any benefits. But in the face of interests, sometimes it is necessary to protect shortcomings. It is necessary to enact patent law, but it cannot be done blindly.

The patent policies of various countries are all based on their own interests, not to mention the Ming Dynasty, in this era, even Western countries, not every country strictly protects patent property rights. Sweden, the representative of the advanced countries of later generations, in this era, is not a large-scale imitation of the patented technology of other countries. The most typical example is the communication equipment giant Ericsson, Ericsson started by making telephones, but the patent of the telephone is American, it is because Sweden does not have perfect patent regulations, so that Ericsson can imitate American telephones on a large scale in Sweden, and eventually became an industry giant.

In later generations, India and China also tended to have policies that were beneficial to their own countries in terms of patent protection, which made Westerners criticize them endlessly. Indians have a very special patent protection for the pharmaceutical industry, they only recognize the production process patents, not the patents of the drug ingredients, so Indians can copy the drugs developed by Western companies on a large scale, as long as the process of their pharmaceutical is different, they can make the generic drugs of the same ingredients become legal drugs. China is not strict enough to protect intellectual property rights such as software, so Chinese companies manufacture pirated products in large quantities, becoming a copycat kingdom.

However, the patent law, as a recognized excellent law, is naturally very necessary, and the Chinese government attaches the most importance to economic interests, so it allows Chinese companies to imitate foreign high-tech achievements, and in this way it does achieve considerable benefits, but the problem is that it also greatly restricts the motivation of Chinese enterprises to innovate, leading to the development of China to a cottage kingdom. On the contrary, China does not pay much attention to people's livelihood, and the protection of drug technology has been carried out, although a large number of patients are waiting to die because they cannot afford expensive drugs, but among China's pharmaceutical companies, some companies with strong innovation capabilities have indeed been born. Indians do not protect drug technology effectively, and India has become a big country of generic drugs, but India's drug innovation is not good. India is relatively effective in protecting high and new technologies, and India's high-tech enterprises are relatively strong.

The traditional Chinese law is relatively perfect, with strict civil and criminal sanctions, and the Ming Dynasty law was created, and a large number of legal provisions of the Ming and Qing dynasties were retained, but in ancient Chinese law, there was a lack of the concept of patent protection, so the Ming Dynasty, which applied customary law, was also lacking in patent law.

Now Britain and France have issued a tough protest, and under the circumstances, Zhu Jinglun plans to really pass a patent law, but he cannot completely copy Western laws, because the Ming Dynasty, which has lagged behind one step in industrialization, cannot bypass the road of imitating the technology of other countries, and if every technology has to pay expensive patent fees, industrialization will not be necessary.

Therefore, it is necessary to introduce a patent law to promote the innovation of Daming enterprises, but it cannot let Daming enterprises bear an unbearable burden.

At Zhu Jinglun's request, Daming's legal experts racked their brains and launched Daming's first patent protection law.

In terms of basic procedures, it is comparable to the most complete English patent law, but with a large number of special provisions.

For example, the technology that has become a public intellectual property right in the West cannot be registered with Daming, so as to prevent Westerners from registering a large number of old technologies in the industrial revolution as patents in Daming, and then charging patent fees from Daming enterprises.

Restrictions on patent fees are imposed, requiring that patent fees should not be higher than 5 percent of the product price, so as to prevent Western companies from exploiting Daming enterprises by taking advantage of patents. Similar Western products imitated by the Ming Dynasty can be regarded as unconscious infringement if there is a difference in craftsmanship and is not through the transfer of technology from Western companies, in which case the payment of a 1% patent fee can be regarded as free technology.

This provision is equivalent to encouraging Daming enterprises to imitate Western technology, but if Western companies register patents in Daming, they only need one percent of the prefect's patent fee; At the same time, if Western enterprises take the initiative to transfer a full set of technical materials, they can charge 5% of the patent fee, which is equivalent to encouraging Western enterprises to teach technology to Daming enterprises.

In addition to these special provisions, the other provisions draw heavily on English patent law and are therefore quite complete.

After the promulgation of the Ming Patent Law, it can be regarded as a positive reply to the joint note between Britain and France, giving the two governments a step, and then it is up to stakeholders like Schneider to compromise, as long as they give up continuing to pursue the dispute, this dispute will be over.

First of all, the Ming government reinterpreted the concept of priority to Schneider, priority does not represent a monopoly patent right, does not mean that Daming Railway must purchase Schneider's railway equipment, the so-called priority is only in the same price, the same level of technology, Schneider's inclined procurement.

The production cost of the Daming Arsenal is much lower than that of Schneider, so it is lower than Schneider's in price, so the use of the equipment of the Arsenal by the Daming Railway does not constitute an infringement of Schneider's priority rights.

After the reinterpretation of the right of priority, it is equivalent to the official decision on the dispute between Schneider and the arsenal, but it is obvious that the Ming government still favors the arsenal, and Schneider will certainly not be satisfied.

In order not to have similar disputes in the future, the Ming government hoped that Schneider would give up this priority, so the government was willing to hand over all orders for the upcoming railway line from Guangzhou to Fuzhou and finally to Hangzhou. Moreover, in the future, the railways invested and built by the Ming government will be subject to public bidding, and the arsenal will not have the final say.

The railway lines announced by the Ming Dynasty to be built, in addition to the railway from Guangzhou to Guilin, Guangxi, and the railway to Fujian, which are all ultra-long railways and are very profitable. Giving the entire Guangfu railway order to Schneider is considered compensation for Schneider's giving up the right of priority, for Schneider, the priority has never brought them benefits, but has caused huge trouble, and they also exchanged the priority for this business.

The public bidding put an end to the behavior of the arsenal to use its operational advantages to monopolize railway orders, so that Schneider could compete with the arsenal under the same conditions in the future, and they were even more happy to accept it.

So Schneider gave up the lawsuit against the arsenal, and the French government also accepted the patent law of the Ming Dynasty, and the cotton textile industry of the Ming Dynasty had not yet developed, and it had not infringed too much on British technology, and the British government was no longer entangled, and the diplomatic dispute between the three countries caused by patent infringement was completely ended.

Although Hao Kejiu felt that the arsenal had suffered a loss this time, and felt that his government's suppression of the government-run industry was too outrageous, he made a fuss in the Ministry of Industry that handled the matter, and even the Ministry of Industry, which had always supported him, felt that Hao Kejiu was a little ignorant.

Soon after the implementation of the patent law, a large number of enterprises began to register patents according to legal procedures, and mainly Western companies, such as Nobel registered their gunpowder patents, British textile machinery manufacturers registered their textile machine patents, and French manufacturers registered patents for silk reeling and silk looms.

The arsenal platform needs to pay patent fees to some enterprises, and naturally there is a loss, but the arsenal also found that they can legally export machines abroad, before because of disputes with Britain and France and other countries, there is still government protection in Daming, but in other countries, such as Japan, which is importing a large number of various machinery and equipment, the arsenal has lost a large number of orders, although Japan has not yet introduced a patent law, but the consuls of various countries apply their own laws through consular jurisdiction, and put pressure on Japan, As a result, a large number of Japanese government-run companies in the Meiji Restoration gave up orders from the Ming Dynasty and turned to Western companies.

Now, after paying a 1 percent patent fee to Western manufacturers, the machinery and equipment in the arsenal suddenly became legal, and they could export to Japan and even to the Western world, and the British and French markets naturally could not enter, but they soon received a batch of orders for silk reeling machines from the United States.

Although the destination is the United States, the customer who placed the order is still a Chinese businessman, a Ming businessman in California, who decided to develop a silk reeling industry in California, because California's silkworm breeding has been quite large-scale, but there is no decent silk reeling industry, the Ming businessman, felt that it was profitable to open a silk reeling factory in California.