Pen vs. Pen: Dealing With A Copycat By Naming & Shaming
from the blatant-copying dept
We often hear from people that without "legal protections" what could they possibly do to stop others from copying them? Of course, "copying" can be loosely defined, and there are times when it's just multiple people coming up with the same basic idea at the same time, and in those cases it seems only fair to just let people compete. But what about a situation of incredibly obvious, blatant copying? Do you need laws? Or can social norms cover the situation? It seems that one small company facing that situation has decided to take the high road and not resort to legal tactics, but instead use social shaming in just such a situation where the copying isn't only obvious, but egregious.For reasons that I don't fully understand, one of the most popular categories of products that have been successful on Kickstarter is high quality metallic pens. There are tons. But one of the first really, really successful ones was Pen Type-A, a minimal stainless steel case for the popular Hi-Tec-C pens, created by CW&T. Among the distinct features of the pen was the rectangular stainless steel case with a ruler on the side that it came in. The Kickstarter project raised $281,990 -- a bit more than the $2,500 they shot for.
And then... earlier this week, popular site Fab.com announced a sale on something called the Torr Classic... a pen that looks remarkably like the Pen Type-A. Remarkably.
Now, for CW&T, this is clearly a pretty horrible situation. The "partner" that they were working with to help them manufacture the pens that everyone had bought had apparently started his own company to make nearly identical pens... and did this while still waiting for the full order of original pens to come in. CW&T responded by just telling the world what had happened:
Oh, and they've also found a new manufacturing partner, here in the US:
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Filed Under: competition, copying, innovation, pens
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TORR official response
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They may have won the 1% battle in the 'tardian universe, but in the end, customers will buy a good product at the best price, and that likely won't be Torr.
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Natural Gas Compressers
My uncle was working one day and was chosen by his supervisor to give some Chinese industry corporation a tour of the manufacturing and finishing facilities. He described them like this:
"It was all a group of men, and one token woman". I asked him why the woman might be there and his response was "She is simply there to represent to us Americans that they somehow are looking progressive with feminist rights like we are states-side"
He goes on to explain that he gave them the tour and man did they take a ton of pictures.
Four months passes after a tour we are at a family gathering and I asked him how the tour went.
"Funny you should mention that. We got a ton of calls from China asking about warranty claims."
Turns out the industrialists who visited the manufacturing and finishing facilities started making, you guessed it, Natural Gas Compressors and pistons. On top of that, they made wverything based on the pictures they took and were so bold as to try to bill Ariell Corperation for the warranty when a part broke down.
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Re: Natural Gas Compressers
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http://micgadget.com/22036/watch-how-chinas-fake-eggs-bounce-like-a-ping-pong-ball-vid eos/
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While they try to get out everything owed to the Kickstarter backers, somehow he was able to run off his own version and market it while the Kickstarter people were struggling even with his "help".
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Same excrement 'nother sol
One day we received several units in a box to repair. At first I thought they were older versions that I hadn't seen before. They were identical visually but they were made from seriously crappy materials. El-cheapo uncoated circuit boards and paper thin keypad membranes that had all torn. They had the company name on them but the chips hadn't been abraded and the soldering and component placement looked like a ten year old had built them.
Turns out it was some outfit in Israel (!?) that was selling the knock offs, which due to the company name being on them, would be shipped back to us for repairs when they failed. It was a very small company and the owner couldn't even think about the cost of suing in a foreign country. The damage to the company reputation was already done with the inferior hardware, all the owner could do is ship them back brand new replacements for the knock offs.
The thing is, that's capitalism. The teapublibertarians say they want markets with absolutely no government interference, well, that's what zero regulation begets, a frantic race to the least common denominator. The sleaziest and most underhanded people/companies win.
There's a difference between competition and parasitism. The problem is that competition is in the middle of a spectrum, not one end. If you go too far one way you have cheap ripoffs actually destroying the value of the original product and brand. If you go to far the other way you end up with the ridiculous situation we have in the USA where IP law has become a highly effective tool for suppressing both legitimate competition and parasites.
Can't lean against either wall, gotta balance somewhere in the middle.
Unless of course we adopt the Soviet method: "You, you, you and you, go to the factory in Siberia and produce 3,409 pens for our 2014 quota. That will be a glorious year for writing the praises of Putin, and for drawing moustaches on photos of that guy with the funny spot on his head"
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Re: Same excrement 'nother sol
Company A makes a good alarm system and ships units that are slightly harder to copy. Company B makes shoddy counterfeits which are presumably sold by an offshore VAR (value added reseller). Company A then accepts responsibility and repairs Company B's product when it fails.
Somehow the leap in logic is that the sleaziest company wins in an unregulated capitalist market. While there are plenty of arguments for government regulation, this isn't a very good one. Quality products often do far better in the marketplace regardless of regulations, no matter how much sleazy competition is out there. Because consumers want products that work.
The only way a shoddy copy can survive is when the lack of quality is acceptable to the consumer because of the cost saving.
The entire point of this article is to show that blatantly ripping someone off can backfire horribly if the core fan base finds out. These pens had a particular fanbase that the copier tried to exploit but the connection to the content creator was far stronger than the copier anticipated.
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Re: Re: Same excrement 'nother sol
In some cases we depend on a testing entity to verify that the product we want is what we are actually paying for. The government doesn't have to do it, but it seems like that in terms of products it hard to verify, the government has stepped. Often not initially but because other protection systems have failed.
With online rating systems, it is becoming easier for people to red-flag cons, but there are still some glitches. Health care products where consumers aren't aware of whether they are getting what they expect or not is one issue. Sure, eventually the frauds may be caught, but in the meantime people may have died.
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Re: Same excrement 'nother sol
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check
Bitch about new pen that looks nothing
like your copy of the Hi Tech C Pen.
check
Some whining cunts need to get a new life.
Check
LOL
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Supper innovation.
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CW&T partnered with a guy named Allen Areseneau
You appear to have misspelled his name, it is Arseneau, which I found out when I grabbed the name and did a search for it.
If you wanna name-and-shame, you gotta get the name right!
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Re:
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... super innovation
What a way to sink a business, mr founding-member of JOIGA, Manufacturing For All (http://joiga.com/Founding_Members_Allen.html).
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Breach of confidence...
This would seem to be a case where a lawsuit would be fully justified and winnable.
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Well, they should have called it "piracy"
Why? Could it be because the usual astroturfing rules from Big Search, Big Hardware and Big Piracy aren't in effect and this blog can actually consider the right thing to do?
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Re: Well, they should have called it "piracy"
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Re: Well, they should have called it "piracy"
"The courts have extended the protection given by the law of breach of confidence by means of what is referred to as the springboard doctrine. The person who is obliged to respect a confidence cannot use the information for his own purposes even after it has entered the public domain if that would be harmful to the person to whom he owed the duty. The classic case is Terrapin v Builders Supply Co (Hayes) Ltdxxiv in which Roxburgh J said (at 392):.
... a person who has obtained information in confidence is not allowed to use it as a springboard for activities detrimental to [the owner of the information] and springboard it remains even when all the features have been published ...
The obligation will not continue for ever: it lasts merely as long as the unfair advantage to be derived from the use of the material would reasonably be expected to remain. In Roger Bullivant Ltd v Ellis,xxv"
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Re: Re: Well, they should have called it "piracy"
They started producing their own pens while at the same time, the original makers were still relying on them to fill late orders.
Because they put this extra effort into leap-frogging over the competition that they were hired to produce for, instead of solving the back-order with this extra production, they done bad.
I don't speak legalese that well, so I wonder if the back-order was solved and there were no late cases in production for the Type-A, would Torr then be allowed to produce their own competing pens? I assume to be perfectly legally airtight, they would need advance warning and give Type-A a chance to shift production to another company to avoid conflict of interest, but assuming there's no protected IP there, that seems legal to me?
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Re: Well, they should have called it "piracy"
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Why not have 'ambulance chasers'?
All the legal owner wants to do is stop the fake products being made - they don't particularly want money. All the lawyers want is money. Isn't this a perfect match?
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Copied Camp Stove
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wow, 30 posts and not one mention of Apple v Samsung
One only has to look at Samsung phones BEFORE iPhone vs Samsung phones after iPhone and NOT BE BLIND.
I was not surprised that the jury came back so quickly.
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Nothing to see here, folks. Move along, please.
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It sucks, but...
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Not a knock-off
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TORR official response
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$100 ink pen
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Can't rip off something that's already a rip off
The reason it took so long for the pens to be made is because the creators of the project had no experience manufacturing a product. They thought they would just make stuff overseas and get rich doing it. They didn't even know how to properly inspect the finish goods. The Torr pen was as different from their pen as their design was from the original patent. They were delayed because of incompetence. They were expecting things that the dirt floor factory they hired were incapable of producing.
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