Get in the ring Part I

An Chinese acquaintance of mine is a writer; lets call him Mr. Hao.   Back about a year ago he finished writing a book.  It would be the first full book he has ever written though in the distant past he has been published many times in books, magazines, and newspapers.  Mr. Hao currently lives in the US.  Back about 20 years ago, he had a close friendship with one of China's top writers of the time whose name I frankly can't recall but who is still influential.  Mr. Hao has kept up his relationship with this writer on and off over the years. 

So, he finished his book and was back in China for a brief period so he called up this famous writer and asked if he would be willing to read it and if he liked it maybe write a review/recommendation.  The writer was excited he had written a book and agreed.  However, the writer was not in town that week so suggested that he give the manuscript (guess it was a Word file on a disc) to a mutual acquaintance of the two.  Now this mutual acquaintance, lets call her Ms. Wang, had some 20 years before stolen my acquaintance's work, published it as her own, and then tried to publicly discredit Mr. Hao.  Despite this, Mr. Hao figured maybe Ms. Wang has grown up now and so it would be ok to give it to her. 

So what has happened?  Of course Ms. Wang never gave the book to the famous writer.  Whenever Mr. Hao would call her over the past few months she would claim to be in bad health or no time.  The famous writer himself is very old, and frankly probably cant be bothered to pursue this favor.  So a week ago Mr. Hao's sister called him to tell him that Ms. Wang has published the book on the internet as her own work and it is apparently becoming quite popular.   Now the nature of this book was a series of very personal essays by Mr. Wang about his childhood, his family, his reflections on Chinese and American culture, etc.  So very personal stuff, which Ms. Wang has expropriated as her own. 

Mr. Hao is considering taking legal action in China.  He is concerned that any Chinese lawyer will just see him as a huge money pot coming from America; a legitimate concern.  However, I am really hoping he does pursue it.  It will be interesting to witness an IP battle first hand.  If a Chinese (albeit Chinese-American) cannot prevail in the Chinese legal system in such a clear case what hope do Western corporations possibly have?

I will update my loyal readers as it progresses.

Comments

[Chen]

Stupid story.

[Chen]

stupid story

[Chen]

Man, if you don't really know what is Chinese culture, or, say, if you don't really understand in a overall point of view of what is Chinese culture, better to let the story be itself, i believe millions of that kind of things happens every day, and all of them will call themself a "famous" issues. Man.

[shamao]

Thanks for your comments, nonsensical though they are.