This is total BS. The USA adopted it's patent system at the founding of our nation. It was "developing" in every sense of the word today. Thomas Jefferson signed the initial US Patents. China does not respect intellectual property rights because of its legacy of Communist thought and barely respects any property rights, let alone intellectual ones! To say otherwise is to be an ignorant apologist for the obvious amorality of the Chinese system.
You seem to be ignorant of American history. Let me enlighten you.
DICKENS V AMERICA | More Intelligent Life
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DICKENS V AMERICA
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In the 19th century publishing battles raged between Britain and the United States. A loophole in American copyright law enabled publishers to reprint British books at will. Until 1891, the intellectual property of non-citizens was up for grabs. Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson and other popular British writers lost untold amounts of income as American publishers profited. American writers, too, were commercial losers at home, as a book of poetry by Longfellow or Poe selling for one dollar had to compete with a 25 cent novel by Dickens or Thackeray.
It was an intellectual-property war every bit as fierce as today's DVD black market in China. American publishers would send their agents to roam the wharves in New York, Philadelphia and Boston to intercept popular manuscripts coming in by ship. Across the Atlantic, English customs officials would search passenger ships coming from the States and confiscate pirated British books as contraband.
Dickens found himself in an awkward spot, torn between his financial interests and his fame. Though he did not earn royalties from his American sales, the inexpensive prices helped circulate his books and serials more widely, increasing his popularity.
When Dickens travelled to America for the first time in 1841, he crowed in a subsequent letter that “there never was a king or Emperor upon the Earth, so cheered, and followed by crowds.” He relished this adulation, which exceeded what he enjoyed back home. He also felt a natural kinship with America's ideals of equality, democracy and liberalism. His own rags-to-riches story was embraced by the country's public and press.
Still, he used his first visit to deliver speeches calling for an international copyright. Dickens expected right-thinking Americans to join him in the fight. But the country was going through an economic crunch, making even high-minded demands for more money unappealing. His tub-thumping especially irked American newspapers, which relied on free British content to fill their pages. Editors stoked public antipathy, spinning Dickens's proposal as unseemly, a greedy demand for more profit. They claimed he was a mercenary, a “hired agent” of British interests. In the New York Evening Tattler, Walt Whitman ran a harsh letter about America forged to look like it had come from Dickens himself (headline: "Boz's Opinions of Us").
Upon returning home, Dickens published a critical book about his travels. "American Notes" was a dry account of divergent aspects of American life, but harsh on slavery and outraged by the “abject state” of the press. One New York newspaper published extracts of the book to sour local fans. About the book, the New World newspaper warned readers: “It will ruin Mr Dickens's personal popularity altogether with us.”
Dickens soon began a new novel, "Martin Chuzzlewit". He used this story to have his revenge on American papers, which had already begun running the serial without compensating him. Irked by the American response to "Notes", Dickens began toying with the unfurling plot of this family melodrama. In this story about a young lad who tries to make his way in the world, the titular boy seeks his fortune in America. The ensuing misadventures lambaste American manners and customs, as well as the very press that was (legally) pirating these chapters. The battle with America had just managed to shape a Dickens novel.
"Martin Chuzzlewit" sold rather poorly for a Dickens novel in England, perhaps owing to its use as a grudge platform. Though Dickens ceased advocating for a change in copyright law, he refused to negotiate with American publishers for advance sheets of his novels. (
Given the lack of copyright, the value of publishing a British book in America was in printing it first. British authors would grudgingly accept small fees to provide advance sheets.)...."
