Did he actually think this idea would make him rich? Was he that naive? I mean it's a damn retractile stick, there's no actual value to it, of course it would be copied to oblivion...
Did he actually think this idea would make him rich? Was he that naive? I mean it's a damn retractile stick, there's no actual value to it, of course it would be copied to oblivion...
Yes, that will for sure stop the Chinese knock-offs... lol
I just fail to see where the news here are. It's obvious to me that not even a patent would have prevented this. So what's the news? That they copied it while it was still in the crowdfunding phase?
I think that the news is actually the speed of the implementation of such idea. It took just one week to start producing it with all the marketing material.
I think that this in fact manifest a great weakness of the western industry.
I understand your point but not your cheerfulness. Would you be equally cheerful if it happened to him in US? What if it happened to you on your country?
If it had happened to me I would be really mad, but it hasn't happened to me, so I can talk about how I feel about this in an unbiased way.
And I feel like this: I'm happy to see that a product that has no actual value (a retractile stick) is produced at a very cheap price. If only the "inventor of the retractile stick" had the rights to produce it, he'd do it at a very inflated price. Now he can't, and everybody (except him) wins.
(All of this assuming he would be granted a patent on a retractile stick, which I very much doubt)
Well, that's a fair point.
On a side note, the current pattent system needs combing. There are so many junk previous-art patents that one has to wonder how they got granted.
He is only a loser because he had an unreasonable goal: "I want hundreds of thousands of pounds/dollars, for a showerthought and to control the production of an easily copyable device with mere pennies of raw materials in it"
If he had a reasonable goal like "I want a bunch of retractable selfie sticks" then he would be a winner too.
He has lost nothing and now can buy selfie sticks for $10. Why doesn't buy a bunch and put his logo on them and resell them for $30?
Given the past history of gimmick products which have worked, the expectation is not completely irrational. Pet Rocks. Chia Pets. The Frisbee, yo-yo, and hula-hoop.
I'm seeing a certain parallel between this item and the virus swiping a toxin gene from a spider story also on HN:
I was going to say that I doubt the original inventor thought it would "make him rich", that it was just an idea that he wanted to realize and perhaps make some money off it. That would be the reasonable way to look at it.
Unfortunately, the guy seems to have gotten busy "enforcing" the IP on copycats in China. The only people who will get any enjoyment out of that is lawyers. Sounds like he's embarking on a miserable never-ending game of wack-a-mole. And for what? A forgettable bauble-store item for impulse buyers on vacation?
Umm, couldn't he just see which manufacturer made the best quality product, and work with them, and make a good profit margin? It may even be in that manufacturers interest to stop the other copycats.
I've also seen things in reverse where silly ideas "inspired" by cheap Chinese gadgets would appear on crowdfunding sites.
There is no point to compete with China on cheap accessories, anything that is not service based or is prohibitory expensive or complicated to make will be copied before you get even the initial samples back for evaluation.
Whether or not we see the value in selfie-sticks, we surely must find at least a little value in people that design solutions at least being able to recoup the costs of development?
It's quite likely, that there are solutions that exist that will take a large amount of investment, but yet once created will have little economic moat to protect themselves from duplication.
Not all of these solutions will be as frivolous as a retractable selfie-stick, and with a financial disincentive to investing in designing them, we create a very low likelihood that these solutions will be created.
That said, I guess unless someone can come up with a cheap system to ensure originators get paid, there's very little that we can do other than express outrage.
Patents were designed to address exactly this problem. Unfortunately, patents are flawed too – possibly more flawed than the problems they're designed to fix.
The article discusses other options (brand recognition, software lock-in, less common materials, etc).
No risk, no reward. Copying, I think, should be planned for, especially in a global market. If a single video is enough to copy it, then maybe don't release a video before you're done making it. What I hate seeing is when an idea gets copied and then the laws made to guard against copying get used against the creator preventing them from even competing on other fronts like quality, marketing, etc.
If it had been that hard to design then the "copycats" wouldn't have got there so quickly.
And no, I absolutely don't agree that you should get exclusive rights to charge a 4x+ markup just because you were the "first" to claim rounded corners.
I think alibaba is missing a huge opportunity. They need to create a kickstarter type site where 1-3% of the sales go to your design and anyone can copy it and sell it on his site(s) and you get the design fee.
While I like this idea, it still runs into the same issue as patents with respect to enforcement. It would be very difficult to get all the copycats to actually fork over the 1-3% of sales on their knockoff product.
The solution to that seems easy: Preferred placement. Alibaba can simply promote the vendors who have signed on to the design royalties system, possibly penalizing those who have not.
The 1-3% IP overhead then becomes effectively a marketing overhead.
I don't really see the point of this comment: Above is a proposal to use a tool to accomplish a goal. It presumes the goal is desired by the actor. If it is not, they are free to use the tool for other purposes.
Because there are multiple actors required to make the proposal work as stated. How are all the actor's purposes aligned by the proposal such that you get a positive sum for all of the required parties?
They already pay 3% to aliexpress marketplace anyway, just jack the price up 1-3% and if you submitted the design before the listing was created part of the money goes to you..
basically it would be a private patent system for the largest world wide marketplace
That's not what I meant. How do you associate the original idea with the actual product being sold on Alibaba/express? Vendors could just create alternate listings with a slightly different title for what is actually the same product and avoid paying the 1-3%. Obviously they might miss out on some brand recognition, but on razor thin margins it would probably be worth it. Enforcement would require someone actively looking at the listings, or depend on the "idea holder" filing complaints against violators.
they make it so that you get companies to bid on your design, you can also sell slightly unpolished products to the backers and then create a bigger batch with either the same company or another one.
What's the big deal? The discovery in this case is not how to build a selfie stick box, it's the realisation that people want to have such a thing. That shouldn't be patentable, it should in fact be the free-for-all that it is.
It's no different than putting up a picture of a burger with 4 patties made of different meats, with a soft-ice on top and a waffle on the bottom. It's not a mystery how to make it, it's a mystery why anyone wants it. But if loads of people express admiration for it, why on earth should there be any protection for the guy who came up with it? He's not taking the risk on buying the meats, setting up a shop, marketing, and so forth.
> why on earth should there be any protection for the guy who came up with it? He's not taking the risk on buying the meats, setting up a shop, marketing, and so forth.
In theory the person inventing it is investing time and effort into the invention itself, and the manufacturing company is risking money on a new idea.
Some protection seems reasonable. The current levels of protections - many years, is weird.
> Lindtner compares the culture of Shenzhen’s manufacturing ecosystem to the open-source movement among software developers.
This is actually an interesting comparison. There are plenty of open-source "clones" or (more kindly) alternatives to closed-source software, and this is seen as a good thing. What's the real difference between this and these sorts of clean-room hardware clones?
To begin with, the open source community supports free software and looks down upon profiteering beyond a basic sustainable income, preferring no income at all from open source contributions.
In my opinion there are two big reasons. Most open source software are building blocks, versus an end product, so it's seen as helping the ecosystem forward. Secondly, atoms are more costly than electrons to copy.
So create a Kickstarter and then just watch Alibaba for the product to appear. Now no need to worry about design, fab, production, or delivery! It's like a magic AI that makes your product for you.
Exactly. It seems to me like the audience on Alibaba crowdsourced the manufacturing of his product. Now he has multiple manufacturers to choose from (something he admits he didn't even figure out yet) and can purchase at a wholesale price ($10). He will still be able to make plenty of profit selling these at the original price of $40.
IMHO this seems like a net good thing. Describe your idea on Kickstarter and it "magically" appears.
Note - I'm not a subscriber to "idea === product" that many "inventors" in the US seem to espouse. I'm not suggesting that ideas are valueless, but I place a larger value on execution. If some enterprising group of people can execute on my idea and I get to own the device I was thinking about, that's still a win in my book.
Just checked Alibaba for "Fidget Cube". Several offerings already available even though Kickstarter campaign is yet to close. Several listings even use marketing from the campaign.
Ever seen an action cam called SJ Cam? It looks like an exact copy of gopro camera. Why do you think they don't sue the manufacturer?
The answer is that they are their original OEM from whom they were buying rebranded products and sold them as hero cameras 1 and 2. They never signed any kind of agreement securing exclusive rights to the design. At the time they wanted to build their next generation cam from scratch, they were unnable to do anything with the fact that SJCam continued selling the original design.
Not only small companies buy off-the shelf designs. Not even biggest brands shy of from banal rebranding: probably more than a half of all notebook designs are off-the-shelf design house products.
Who sold Apple the reference design for the first ifone? It was Taiwanese ODM "First International Computer," and they are trying hard to conceal that fact as it will set their "designed by Apple in california" line in bad light.
If somebody had access to the repair manual for the first iphone, they could've seen many references to the ODM and individual factories making sub-assemblies.
This looks more than a bit suspicious to me. Guy comes up with product idea, but before he can get it to market he's beaten by copycats in China. That's one half of the story.
Yet why has he failed his backers over and over again? Take a look at the comments. There are hundreds of comments going back 5 months demanding refunds, calling him a liar, fraud, etc. His original delivery date was supposed to be 5 months ago. He failed to meet that, and has failed to update his backers, and has said "no refunds" on top of it all.
Frankly this reeks of scam to me. Nothing about the copycat situation should affect his obligations to his backers who all apparently paid $50 for a device being sold for $10 right now. There is no excuse that explains him failing to deliver for the past 5 months.
I would not be surprised if he's trying to scam his backers and is involved with one of the copycats himself.
57 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 130 ms ] threadThe main issue here is that the fade might be over before it would be worth to set up the heavy legal instrument for it.
I just fail to see where the news here are. It's obvious to me that not even a patent would have prevented this. So what's the news? That they copied it while it was still in the crowdfunding phase?
I think that this in fact manifest a great weakness of the western industry.
And I feel like this: I'm happy to see that a product that has no actual value (a retractile stick) is produced at a very cheap price. If only the "inventor of the retractile stick" had the rights to produce it, he'd do it at a very inflated price. Now he can't, and everybody (except him) wins.
(All of this assuming he would be granted a patent on a retractile stick, which I very much doubt)
If he had a reasonable goal like "I want a bunch of retractable selfie sticks" then he would be a winner too.
He has lost nothing and now can buy selfie sticks for $10. Why doesn't buy a bunch and put his logo on them and resell them for $30?
Definition of the inventive step in most patent systems is very weak.
I'm seeing a certain parallel between this item and the virus swiping a toxin gene from a spider story also on HN:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12722242
Unfortunately, the guy seems to have gotten busy "enforcing" the IP on copycats in China. The only people who will get any enjoyment out of that is lawyers. Sounds like he's embarking on a miserable never-ending game of wack-a-mole. And for what? A forgettable bauble-store item for impulse buyers on vacation?
There is no point to compete with China on cheap accessories, anything that is not service based or is prohibitory expensive or complicated to make will be copied before you get even the initial samples back for evaluation.
It's quite likely, that there are solutions that exist that will take a large amount of investment, but yet once created will have little economic moat to protect themselves from duplication.
Not all of these solutions will be as frivolous as a retractable selfie-stick, and with a financial disincentive to investing in designing them, we create a very low likelihood that these solutions will be created.
That said, I guess unless someone can come up with a cheap system to ensure originators get paid, there's very little that we can do other than express outrage.
The article discusses other options (brand recognition, software lock-in, less common materials, etc).
If I know that my idea will get sniped, I'm not going to put the time and effort into the design and the Kickstarter.
And no, I absolutely don't agree that you should get exclusive rights to charge a 4x+ markup just because you were the "first" to claim rounded corners.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_selfie-related_injurie...
The 1-3% IP overhead then becomes effectively a marketing overhead.
basically it would be a private patent system for the largest world wide marketplace
It's no different than putting up a picture of a burger with 4 patties made of different meats, with a soft-ice on top and a waffle on the bottom. It's not a mystery how to make it, it's a mystery why anyone wants it. But if loads of people express admiration for it, why on earth should there be any protection for the guy who came up with it? He's not taking the risk on buying the meats, setting up a shop, marketing, and so forth.
In theory the person inventing it is investing time and effort into the invention itself, and the manufacturing company is risking money on a new idea.
Some protection seems reasonable. The current levels of protections - many years, is weird.
OK, but how much real money has he lost.
I lose millions of pounds of potential money every time I play the lottery.
And years of catch-up.
Makes 100% sense, no need for innovation yet.
Just sucks if you are in a rich country.
This is actually an interesting comparison. There are plenty of open-source "clones" or (more kindly) alternatives to closed-source software, and this is seen as a good thing. What's the real difference between this and these sorts of clean-room hardware clones?
But you might bump into the oposite problem: patent trolls taking advantage of excess of protection for ideas.
:)
Note - I'm not a subscriber to "idea === product" that many "inventors" in the US seem to espouse. I'm not suggesting that ideas are valueless, but I place a larger value on execution. If some enterprising group of people can execute on my idea and I get to own the device I was thinking about, that's still a win in my book.
[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/magazine/zpm-espresso-and-...
Serious food for thought.
Ever seen an action cam called SJ Cam? It looks like an exact copy of gopro camera. Why do you think they don't sue the manufacturer?
The answer is that they are their original OEM from whom they were buying rebranded products and sold them as hero cameras 1 and 2. They never signed any kind of agreement securing exclusive rights to the design. At the time they wanted to build their next generation cam from scratch, they were unnable to do anything with the fact that SJCam continued selling the original design.
Not only small companies buy off-the shelf designs. Not even biggest brands shy of from banal rebranding: probably more than a half of all notebook designs are off-the-shelf design house products.
Who sold Apple the reference design for the first ifone? It was Taiwanese ODM "First International Computer," and they are trying hard to conceal that fact as it will set their "designed by Apple in california" line in bad light.
If somebody had access to the repair manual for the first iphone, they could've seen many references to the ODM and individual factories making sub-assemblies.