And Germany is highly critical of France's industrial espionage. And Korea is highly critical of Israel's industrial espionage. Wherever you look, if you're seeing a highly advanced economy, there's a web of industrial espionage connecting it to every other economy.
But is this espionage carried out specifically by the Governments of these nations by and large? Or by agents of companies which reside in these countries? I'm not aware in these cases to be honest.
The point being that the difference between companies committing industrial espionage, and a government instituted policy of said behavior, seems vastly different.
That is pretty interesting and does not surprise me to be totally honest. It doesn't seem like something that any countries' public would likely think is a good thing (rather than a price of doing business/everybody does it so we should sort of deal). But then again, so many policies work in that fashion, it would be ridiculous to think this wouldn't be similar.
That does not mean it is right -- at the very least it is extremely hypocritical for the US, which is aggressively pursuing stronger copyright/patent/trade secrets in various trade agreements.
