Meet Bill IPR Thompson

Bill Thompson

Today was a great day to meet people at Sasha's in Shanghai and just when I had decided to leave the place, a tall guy called Bill Thompson walked in together with a more stern looking guy from Gucci looking for fake bags. Bill is an old friend I had not seen forever and he was on my list as a potential speakers too.

Bill Thompson has been in the forefront of the struggle against fake goods in China like nobody else, organizing and supervising thousands of raids at factories all over China. For my previous book I have been interviewing him extensively. He is a good story teller and very knowledgeable when it comes to (local) government relations and putting the struggle for intellectual property in a good perspective.

There was on problem, I thought when we set off Chinabiz Speakers, since he was working for the Pinkerton's Asia, who started their career in protecting the expansion of the railways in the US, prosecuted the Jesse James's of those days, moved on as strike breakers and are now a well-established detective agency. In Asia they have been mostly in charge of actions to protect intellectual property rights. I was pretty sure they would have a policy in place preventing their employees from giving paid speeches.

But tonight I discover Bill had started his own agency three years ago and that means he is a - relatively - free man. We will have lunch soon and expect him as a speaker here soon.