Marine Log - May 2008 - (Page 19)

BY NICK BLENKEY EUROPEANTECHNOLOGY EUROPE PLOTS ITS TECH STRATEGY E uropean name plates are bolted onto most major items of shipboard marine equipment regardless of where the ships are being built. With systems and equipment adding up to as much as 70% of a ship’s price tag, marine technology continues to make a significant contribution to European economic well-being. The challenge for the European marine equipment industry is to keep the status quo despite pressures to locate the manufacturing capability to the countries where ships are actually built. Oftentimes, these locations can be where there is little regard for the concept of intellectual property, where copying is seen as an artform in its own right and license fees and royalities are resented more and more with every passing year. LESSONS FROM THE AUTO INDUSTRY As European companies scramble to get into manufacturing joint ventures to feed China’s shipbuilding industry, they might pause to look at what’s been happening in the automotive sector. Among a number of intellectual property infringement cases that started hitting the courts a couple of years ago have been one in which GM sued China's Chery Automobile Co for alleged piracy of a mini car developed by its South Korean affiliate Daewoo. GM’s investigation results showed that the Daewoo Matixa and the Chery QQ vehicles “shared remarkably identical body structure, exterior design, interior design and key components.” This is just one example of cases of Chinese car cloning, design rip-offs and lookalikes. If this sort of thing is going on in the very public automotive arena, how restrained are Chinese cloners going to be about something hidden within the bowels of a ship? The European Commission is sufficiently concerned about the threat that it commissioned a study of Shipbuilding Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). It found that a significant percentage of innovations in the shipbuilding and www.marinelog.com Earlier this year, the H. Cegielski plant in Poznan, Poland, built its first ME engine, the MAN B&W 7S60ME-C7 two-stroke engine marine equipment industry is not fully protected by measures such as patents and clauses in legal contracts. Though there is room for improvement, overall the legal framework is not inadequate for the protection of IP. But companies are making suboptimal use of the existing protections for reasons that include enforcement difficulties, the costs of adequate protection, a lack of awareness in the industry and hesitations with regard to taking legal steps out of fear of harming business relations. One solution the study says that companies need to look at is moving to a model of “open innovation.” Open innovation is a concept that’s been receiving a lot of attention in IP circles in the past few years. Among other things it involves approaches such as patent sharing, patent pooling and patent auctions. In the current “closed innovation” world, diffusion of knowledge is a threat. The open innovation model, in contrast, encourages cooperation. That plays to efforts being made with- in the European maritime sector to strengthen the industry’s overall competiveness by encouraging cooperation on a number of fronts. THE ALLURE OF THE CLUSTER A lot of that cooperation is going to take place within the context of “clusters.” A European Commission staff working document on “Maritime Clusters” that was published last October reckons that Europe’s shipyards account for some 20% of worldwide production capacity (in volume terms) of merchant ships and says that they are global leaders in the production of passenger and cargo ferries, cruise ships, dredges and a number of highly specialized smaller vessel types. The document also asserts that “significant market positions” are also held in latest generation transport vessels and high value-added vessels. “Europe’s competitive advantage in shipbuilding, as in many other maritime sectors, has been and will continue to be MAY 2008 MARINE LOG 19 http://www.marinelog.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Marine Log - May 2008

Marine Log - May 2008 Contents Editorial Second Thoughts Update Inside Washington Europe Plots Its Tech Strategy SDNV Container Ship Update Diesels Can Burn Anything: Even Clean Fuel Boost for Small Shipyards Gateway to the Caribbean Room to Grow Show Review Tech News Newsmakers Contracts Events Website Directory ML Buyer's Guide ML Marketplace Maritime Salvage Letters

Marine Log - May 2008

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