Some days you wonder who the first asshole was

[mrblaine]

I developed the first flip up license plate holder for Tough Stuff Products 15 years ago. They sold fairly well for a while and then quit. Ours were all stainless to fight rust and be fairly maintenance free. Looking at fairlead designs, I came across one of the copies, clicked the "more like this" pic and holeee crap are there a bunch of them now. I wonder which little asshole Chinese fucker did the first copy?
http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-5...0001&campid=5337789113&icep_item=192909539831

 

[Halfstock]

Yep, that's why I go out of my way to buy USA made products, if I can. The Asian manufacturing sector has never respected copyrights nor patents from any country. Unfortunately many well known American companies are drinking the high-profit koolaid of off-shore manufacturing which benefits no one here in the long-run.

Perhaps why the lockers in my shop, going into my little ElkTaxi in the next couple of weeks are and Ox and an Ected. At least they are made here. supporting skilled manufacturing and machining craftsmen.

For a license plate holder, I didn't find any that were positively USA made. So, I chose this one, Canadian made beats Chinese any day of the week!

Cascadia 4x4 Flipster V2 License Plate Holder

 

[gg1]

Generally speaking, Chinese products are junk. I try and avoid them at a lot of cost. My Jeep has USA made parts underneath. I bought two Chinese fenders from Crown. They didn't even match! I kid you not. Coffee maker same thing. Bought a damn Krups, made in China and it lasted less than a year. Got a German French press at it will last my my lifetime. All stainless. Better to pay the money once, not 10 times. I wish our country didn't buy all that disposable stuff, but we do. Then we wave a flag like we are "patriotic" as we head to Target, Walmart or whatever Chinese importer. They are all the same, just importers.

 

[MallCrawlOnTons]

The first? Or the the first for tough stuff?

 

[fuse]

I developed the first flip up license plate holder for Tough Stuff Products 15 years ago. They sold fairly well for a while and then quit. Ours were all stainless to fight rust and be fairly maintenance free. Looking at fairlead designs, I came across one of the copies, clicked the "more like this" pic and holeee crap are there a bunch of them now. I wonder which little asshole Chinese fucker did the first copy?
http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-5...0001&campid=5337789113&icep_item=192909539831

That sucks. It's like asymmetric economic warfare.

Even if you or Tough Stuff had patented it (maybe you did?), it would be nearly impossible and prohibitively expensive to fight all the clones. You'd have to find everyone who is making and distributing the knock-offs and you could send them letters telling them to stop, but they might just ignore you. Then the only option would be to try to take them to court which gets really expensive. Even if you managed to take a couple of them down, a dozen more would pop up.

You'd end up spending a lot of money defending a low-cost product that probably has slim margins. That's not a winning proposition.

 

[mrblaine]

Yep, that's why I go out of my way to buy USA made products, if I can. The Asian manufacturing sector has never respected copyrights nor patents from any country. Unfortunately many well known American companies are drinking the high-profit koolaid of off-shore manufacturing which benefits no one here in the long-run.

Perhaps why the lockers in my shop, going into my little ElkTaxi in the next couple of weeks are and Ox and an Ected. At least they are made here. supporting skilled manufacturing and machining craftsmen.

For a license plate holder, I didn't find any that were positively USA made. So, I chose this one, Canadian made beats Chinese any day of the week!

Cascadia 4x4 Flipster V2 License Plate Holder

The one Ricky has at TRE is 100% US made excluding a faster or clip maybe. I'm not looking up the provenance on those because I don't care that much.

 

[mrblaine]

That sucks. It's like asymmetric economic warfare.

Even if you or Tough Stuff had patented it (maybe you did?), it would be nearly impossible and prohibitively expensive to fight all the clones. You'd have to find everyone who is making and distributing the knock-offs and you could send them letters telling them to stop, but they might just ignore you. Then the only option would be to try to take them to court which gets really expensive. Even if you managed to take a couple of them down, a dozen more would pop up.

You'd end up spending a lot of money defending a low-cost product that probably has slim margins. That's not a winning proposition.

It is nice to see that others understand why patents and protections don't work. They only afford you the opportunity to spend more money to try and shut down the imposters.

 

[mrblaine]

The first? Or the the first for tough stuff?

Took me a second. The first little dickhead that knocked off the license plate flip for TS.

 

[billiebob]

It might be Asians stealing American ideas today. But the practice was standard American operating practice 100 years ago. Big American Companies stealing ideas from smaller American companies. And undercutting costs with mass production.

 

[mrblaine]

It might be Asians stealing American ideas today. But the practice was standard American operating practice 100 years ago. Big American Companies stealing ideas from smaller American companies. And undercutting costs with mass production.

Not one iota of which changes my level of disgust over folks stealing MY intellectual property and using it for their benefit. In fact, that high level of disgust has pretty much shut down ME developing more products that are unique and innovative.

 

[Chris]

I remember talking to @psrivats (who is an engineer at Intel) one time when we were hanging out. He was telling me Intel (and most of the other tech companies) won't even hire Chinese workers unless they are American citizens due to the issues with them stealing technology and then going back to China with it.

The Chinese (some of them, not all of them) can sure be dirty scoundrels, that's for sure.

 

[psrivats]

I remember talking to @psrivats (who is an engineer at Intel) one time when we were hanging out. He was telling me Intel (and most of the other tech companies) won't even hire Chinese workers unless they are American citizens due to the issues with them stealing technology and then going back to China with it.

The Chinese (some of them, not all of them) can sure be dirty scoundrels, that's for sure.

Just to clarify, Intel does hire people of Chinese origin ... just not for the HVM technology development wing that we have here in Oregon. Note that Intel has multiple campuses in China.


https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/location/worldwide.html

 

[Chris]

Just to clarify, Intel does hire people of Chinese origin ... just not for the HVM technology development wing that we have here in Oregon. Note that Intel has multiple campuses in China.


https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/location/worldwide.html

Thanks for the clarification. But I assume there has to be concerns about Chinese stealing technology and taking it back to China, right?

Although I guess if they have campuses in China, maybe that's a moot point?

 

[psrivats]

Thanks for the clarification. But I assume there has to be concerns about Chinese stealing technology and taking it back to China, right?

Although I guess if they have campuses in China, maybe that's a moot point?

Those concerns do exist. IP theft is pretty serious. Intel tries to mitigate it as best as it can. We don't manufacture any CPUs in China (CPU chips are our bread and butter for desktop, laptop and servers) .. but we do manufacture memory chips, and we do testing/packaging in campuses in China.

 

[MallCrawlOnTons]

Took me a second. The first little dickhead that knocked off the license plate flip for TS.

Nah, I was referring to what you said about developing the first flip up plate. Did you invent it or just develop your own style flip up plate for tough stuff product.

 

[mrblaine]

Nah, I was referring to what you said about developing the first flip up plate. Did you invent it or just develop your own style flip up plate for tough stuff product.

I'm very conscientious about hunting down any version of a product I have an idea for before I spend one dime on it. Nothing was out there that flipped up out of the way. I have built a run of the clip mounts for Kilby that snapped onto the rollers but could find nothing that remained in place and just flipped up out of the way. I typically don't use "invention" and prefer development instead.

 

[Powdermonkey]

Unfortunately not everyone can afford American products. My wife and I do try to seek American products on more meaningful purchase.
One thing we are very vigilant with is our dogs! Only Made in America!
I’m glad most people on here recommend American products and are very good about pointing it out. I’m very happy with my TRE purchase recommenced by you guys!

 

[MallCrawlOnTons]

I'm very conscientious about hunting down any version of a product I have an idea for before I spend one dime on it. Nothing was out there that flipped up out of the way. I have built a run of the clip mounts for Kilby that snapped onto the rollers but could find nothing that remained in place and just flipped up out of the way. I typically don't use "invention" and prefer development instead.

Did you patent it?

 

[1515art]

crazy how much it costs to take a product to market I'm sure there was great expense and work on that flip up frame, my next door neighbor is just getting ready to launch a new tool and it took him about 8 yrs and $500k but he's finally into production and going into a few hardware type stores hopefully all works out cost him a big chunk of his retirement.

 

[EzPeezy]

It doesn't matter one bit these days if you patent a design or not. It's going to get ripped off.