China Is Getting Better at Busting Counterfeiters

I appreciate the efforts made by ''China's piracy plague'' (News: Analysis & Commentary, June 5) to investigate the counterfeit problem in China. The report argues that ''weak rule of law'' and ''insufficient enforcement'' worsens the counterfeit problem, but it fails to recognize that legislation and enforcement have improved in China, especially recently. In 1999, Chinese authorities investigated and brought into court 1,810 cases of counterfeiting foreigner-owned trademarks, a 44% increase over the year before. And last month, Todd Dickinson, director of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, praised China's achievement during his meeting with Jiang Yin, administrator of China's State Intellectual Property Office.

I agree that some businesses may feel it is harder than before to deal with counterfeiting, although the overall situation has been improved. One of the main reasons is that the booming Chinese economy makes more capital and better technology available, which may also better enable some counterfeiters. Besides, sometimes the improvement of rule of law may ironically make it harder to prosecute and convict a counterfeiter, since China has adopted a more highly developed system to prevent law-enforcement authorities from abusing their power. But in the long run, it is the law-abiding businesses that will benefit the most from a booming economy and the improved rule of law.

The Chinese market may be like a girl in her teenage stage--acquiring some aggressive behaviors but heading for maturity very fast. The authors made a mistake when they doubted whether it is the right time to invest in China now. If you idle when a girl is growing into a lady, you may lose the best opportunity to win her love.

Larry Xianghong Wu
Office of Science & Technology
Embassy of China
Washington

Don't Apply a Different Antitrust Standard to Cisco

How is it that Cisco can control 90% of a market and charge higher prices than competitors for an ''easily substitutable'' product (''Does Cisco have a Microsoft problem?'' Legal Affairs, June 5)? People don't buy routers based on cachet. If, in fact, customers could get the same function and compatibility for a lower price, presumably they would, and Cisco wouldn't have its 90% share.

Also, when Microsoft buys up potential rival-technology companies, it is cornering the market and stifling innovation. When Cisco does the same thing, it is merely ''an engine for distributing cutting-edge technologies, which customers get to use far more rapidly than if they were being sold by tiny companies...'' If the reasoning the Justice Dept. is applying in the Microsoft case means anything, they won't be buying these arguments.

Ralph L. Cumming
Littleton, Colo.

Let Doctors Help Diagnose Sick Buildings

Although ''Is your office killing you?'' (Special Report, June 5) contributed importantly to highlighting many of the issues surrounding indoor air quality and sick buildings, two additional comments are worth noting. First, occurrences of indoor air contamination are more infrequent than pervasive. Second, the ''box'' entitled ''Diagnosing a sick office'' omitted one essential point. Since health is the central theme, physicians need to be the central players, supplemented by environmental professionals. A headache, after all, may have many causes: bad air or eye strain or muscle spasm in the neck from leaning over a computer terminal or a brain tumor.

The point: Employee symptoms must begin with a clinical diagnosis. This may or may not lead to an environmental assessment, which, in turn, may or may not identify a building-related cause. Having consulted on hundreds of indoor air issues for 15 years, we can attest that few buildings are grossly contaminated. Even those that are rarely engender permanent or serious illnesses in their occupants.

Ronald E. Gots
Howard M. Weiner
Principals
International Center for Toxicology & Medicine
Rockville, Md.

The Small Beauties of the New Economy

The New Economy seems to be expressed more in terms of complex economic and business matters. But the reality is that the New Economy can be seen in the simplest matters (''Old economy or new, vertical empires don't work,'' Industrial Management, June 12).

My computer failed the other day. I had purchased it with a maintenance agreement that guaranteed repair at the end of a UPS overnight trip. After an anxious telephone call to the repair facility, they sent a box for my (laptop) computer, which arrived the next day. After backing up my hard disk, the machine left on its trip from a nearby UPS facility. After a day of nail biting, I called the repair facility. They said it was fixed and would be on its way to me that day.

The next morning, the doorbell announced a UPS delivery person with my computer. On its hurried trail, the machine tested perfectly with the original fault repaired.

I had had my computer repaired (in Texas) more quickly and at least as expertly as any local shop. The New Economy had provided me with inexpensive overnight shipping and a centralized-repair facility to do a complicated job at a reasonable price. So the New Economy really has changed the way we do business at every level, even the simplest.

Stanley Fierston
Marblehead, Mass.

Privacy and Secure Data Are VerticalOne's Priorities

I enjoyed ''Look, there's your portfolio'' (Finance, June 12). The article gave consumers a good snapshot into an important new way to manage personal finances online. You captured the fact that account aggregation is a trend that is fast becoming mainstream for consumers. At the same time, I feel you did not accurately portray the measures that VerticalOne is taking to ensure consumer security and privacy online.

Ensuring the privacy and security of our users' data is the foundation of our business, and we use only the most sophisticated measures in ensuring the integrity of this critical information. With the backing of our parent company, SI Corp., the leading provider of online financial services to more than 800 banks worldwide, we have set the highest standards for banking security, on par or even exceeding those of traditional brick-and-mortar banks.

Your article raised the possibility of security breaches if the user's brokerage/bank login and password fell into the wrong hands. But gaining access to user data is virtually impossible. VerticalOne has multiple levels of security, from firewalls and intrusion-detection systems to ultra-secure servers and data encryption. If an intruder were to attempt to get past our security, alarms would be triggered, and additional barriers would have to be overcome. Even internal access by authorized users requires highly restricted access and audit trails.

Gregg Freishtat
CEO
VerticalOne Corp.
Atlanta

Burning Waste Is a Better Solution Than Landfills

Regarding ''A global-warming critic's hot stock'' (Up Front, June 5): Ogden Corp., on whose board I served, was initially linked to traditional industry and has long been listed on the New York Stock Exchange. During the 1980s, it licensed European technology for deriving electric energy from combustible waste, a procedure widely used in Europe, as well as in Japan and Taiwan. Burning such waste in well-regulated furnaces is a far better way of disposing of it than building up mountains of rotting material as we have done, say, in Staten Island.

More recently, Ogden joined with Bechtel to develop a power-producing plant that serves the Manila grid in the Philippines and uses coal of high quality. The modern power plant is well outside Manila, which is served by high-voltage power lines. As is usually the case, developing countries, of which mainland China is a prime example, are less interested in controlling air pollution than in climbing the technological ladder. Concern about environmental control tends to come at a later stage in industrial development.

While it is true that I did enjoy the benefits of some relatively modest stock options, the benefits on sale are related to the rise of the shares since the date of issue. The bubbles such as we have experienced on the Nasdaq exchange are rarely found in traditional industry. Of course, there is also the matter of taxes.

Frederick Seitz
President Emeritus
Rockefeller University
New York