Never mind all those pesky kids sharing music on p2p systems or pirates pressing fake Windows Vista DVDs; how about the British government engaged in wholesale theft of IP know-how & trade secrets at, literally, gunpoint?
At the end of the second World War it seems that the British government felt that it would be useful to get German scientific knowledge & know-how to help it get one over on a restored Germany.
The techniques was to employ a military unit of thugs known as T-force to seize people at gun point from their homes in the middle of the night and whisk them from Germany to Britain for interrogation and coercion until they revealed IP and trade secrets.
That it was legal is almost beyond doubt since various decrees by the occupying powers allowed the British to seize anything of military significance or which could be reparations. However some of the things targeted were of questionable military or scientific significance and more to enable British firms to defeat German rivals: one would not really regard perfume as a major military tactical concern of the British.
As the Guardian article points out these tactics were more reminiscent of the Gestapo: old women threatened in the middle of the night unless they revealed perfume ingredient secrets; threatening to intern technician unless they revealed trade secrets.
Shabby behaviour by the moral victors, but then nothing ever changes one supposes. Read the Guardian article here.
That phrase...
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