China has been accused of stealing the design of the Isle of Wight-built Britten-Norman Islander aircraft for its new autonomous drone.
The TP1000, which has been built by a state-owned company in the Far East, can carry an impressive payload of 1 tonne and fly some 621 miles – all without a pilot at the helm.
But questions have been raised about its near identical design to the Britten-Norman Islander aircraft, designed and developed on the Isle of Wight in 1965. The aircraft is still produced here from the hangars at Bembridge Airport.
China’s new ‘drone’ – with a wingspan of 14.9m – was unveiled last weekend in Quingdao, Shandong.
The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is expected to enter commercial service next year, with more than 30 on order.
A spokesperson for Britten Norman has acknowledged that the UAV has a ‘striking resemblance’ to the design of the BN-2T Islander, adding:
“The Islander is a globally renowned, iconic airframe and this UAV does not have our endorsement. We have already developed and produced our own cargo variant, and we are actively exploring autonomous capabilities.
“The situation raises concerns regarding potential misuse of our intellectual property, which we are investigating to determine if any rights have been violated and whether further action is required to protect the Islander’s iconic design.”
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Alicia Kearns, Security Minister for the Conservatives, has told The Telegraph:
“We outright condemn the shameless theft of the iconic British Islander aircraft design by a Chinese-state company, and the industrialised nature of intellectual property theft by the Chinese Communist Party.
“Global trade relies on respect for the rule of law. China’s economic model is based on intellectual property theft, currency manipulation, state subsidy and the dumping of artificially cheap products to suffocate industries in the UK and those of allied economies”.
It looks similar, handle it. It can fly without a pilot, is more advanced. Some cars look very very similar too, and no one moans about that. Asda’s lasagne looks like Tesco’s or Aldi’s lasagne. Put up with it, this kind of stuff happens everywhere nowadays.
I don’t have a problem with China, they make
things much cheaper than anyone else.
China copies everything,saves a fortune in R&D.
Yet they make things much cheaper.
Of course they can make it cheaper when they do not have to pay for the R&D and just steal the design instead.
They have clever engineers, they could have designed it themselves but they chose to copy an existing design instead.
China stealing proprieter commercial secrets, I am so surprised and shocked.
It’s a dead ringer
The design is 60 years old – they are hardly copying state of the art…