When our international manufacturing lawyers recommend to our clients that they take steps to protect their product from being copied in China, they sometimes push back with a "first to market" argument and they simply do not have enough time to register their IP or to protect themselves with contracts. Those are frills that only established companies with old fashioned brands need worry about. Upstart companies need to focus on designing an innovative product and bringing it to market as quickly as possible. If we do that, we can stay ahead of the clones and the rip offs and this is the key to success in today's market.
尽管这个论点听起来似乎有道理，但它几乎总是错误的。
这种抢占市场先机的论点源于20世纪70至80年代盛行的营销策略，当时各类产品普遍采用此法，尤其在80年代至90年代初的鞋类与运动服饰市场中更为显著。彼时业界普遍认为，任何款式或型号的产品生命周期至多仅有六个月。
当时的做法是定期更换款式，认为仿冒者至少需要三到四个月才能将假货推向市场。因此只要每半年更新一次设计，就能领先于竞争对手。然而这种策略如今已行不通，因为仿冒者能在数日内而非数月内完成仿制品的上市。 大型鞋类与运动服饰制造商早已摒弃这种抢占市场先机的策略，转而采取我们中国律师为所有企业倡导的积极知识产权注册与合同保护措施。
The first to market approach similarly fails in today's electronics manufacturing market as well. The simple truth is that if you have not protected your product design, your chances of being first to market have just gone down. You run the very real risk of never making it to market at all or being met in the market by your direct competitors or your Chinese manufacturer who will beat you on price, destroying the market for your product. In today's world of instant product cloning there is usually little to no first to market advantage.
How does this work on the ground? There are two types of Chinese factories that will copy your product. The first and most obvious is the Chinese factory you will be using to make your product. See Your China Factory as your Toughest Competitor. Your manufacturer controls your molds and tooling and it has developed the production prototypes. Your manufacturer may even know your future or intended customers. Without IP protections, all your manufacturer need do to sink you is quote you an unreasonable price or otherwise refuse to make the product for you and then go off and make it for itself. Or better yet, it can just charge you a reasonable price for your product but delay its production. You then are not only not "first to market," you are "never to market" or blocked entirely from the market. For more on how this sort of thing goes down, check out China and The Internet of Things and How to Destroy Your Own Company.
另一类会仿制你产品的中国公司，是国内众多电子制造商中专门从事逆向工程的企业。这类公司拥有非常成熟的体系。他们深知，仅仅制造克隆产品远远不够，更重要的是必须将这些克隆产品推向市场。
这些仿制品商店因此建立了全球性的零售网络，专门销售最新创新产品的仿制品，并积极利用互联网进行销售。由于这些制造商无需过多顾虑质量控制或品牌声誉，他们通常能让仿制品与原版产品几乎同时上市，甚至抢先一步，且售价仅为原版产品的一半——无论是实际定价还是预期定价。
These clone manufacturers then ride on the coattails of the legitimate manufacturers, making use of the legitimate manufacturer's advertising, promotion and buzz for their own purposes. They set up their Amazon and Alibaba and Ebay pages so that searches for the original product will bring up their cloned product as well. Since the cloned product is substantially cheaper than the legitimate original, they can make strong sales. With Amazon's recent push to bring on more Chinese sellers, this problem has only gotten worse. See Hundreds of frustrated sellers grilled an Amazon exec over Chinese counterfeit products. I was on Amazon the other day looking for motion detectors and there were just a ton of Chinese companies selling clones. This sort of thing has become the rule not the exception.
若不保护产品免遭仿冒厂商侵袭，它很可能在仿制品的汪洋中湮没无闻。
所以别再提"抢占市场先机"的论调了。这种策略通常并不适用于当今中国制造业的现实。在中国，你必须防范制造商的抄袭行为，同时防范山寨工厂的仿制行为。这要求你在产品上市前 完成知识产权注册，并签署书面协议（如保密协议、生产制造协议和产品开发协议）。
若准备不足，你将无法率先进入市场；甚至可能永远无法进入市场。
