The reason why they look so much alike is that they had the same designer, he sold them slightly different plans, I think the did fences aside from slight asthetic differences are reflector and style of control ring.
Interesting that Sysmax wants to let you know that Niteye copied their porducts and Niteye shows on their website how they had the same booth with Jetbeam at the latest Asian Outdoor Show. http://www.niteye.com/article/?type=detail&id=22
Just my thoughts please bare with me, I know I might get bashed for this…….and banded over at CPF.
The guy Data (Dave) that designed and made the original 007 and others in his range, I have never talked to or met.
Don’t take this personally CarpentryHero I’m just using this as an example…. you said “as for other knockoffs keep them coming” so we don’t mind knockoff’s as long as its not too close to home…. to justify that kind of thinking I find it funny that because Data is from the USA its ok for Americans to justify to themselves to protect intellectual property/time/labor and that’s ok and a good thing (in an ideal world) But in this real the rest of the world (say china to mention but one, they have 1.3 billion people Vs 300 mil in the USA)
I know they took Data’s ideas, and agree they should have asked or paid for the rights to do so but were talking ethics now, so to say as for other knockoff’s its ok that in its self is breaching ethics - this is not a personal attack on you Carpentryhero I’m just pointing out the general census of thought and because you said what you think out loud.
So many manufacturers take/steal intellectual property such as engineering and electronics (for example) cars hyundi,chery,greatwall etc, and if we buy them we by into the whole ethical thing at some point - we buy things on decisions based on cost Vs quality, and as time goes on these cheaper manufacturers learn how to make them just as good as the others but the only difference is they can get/make people work for a $1 a day making it a cheaper product for us.
To me, you can go further and say is the titanium used made in the USA? is the machinery used all made in the USA? is all the electronics (leds,batteries,springs,boards,wires) made/built in the USA? or are we using imports because they are cheaper/easier to get from China. Just for my sake I would be interested to know how much of the real 007 is 100% made in the USA…. or is it just intellectual property and cost of time we are disusing?? - BTW our beloved Iphone is made with slave labor out of china because it makes it cheaper for us to buy, but that’s ethically ok, just a thought.
This is just my opinion again.
One beef I have is I really like Saab’s (have owned 6) GM will not admit it and say they were just bailing out Saab but they will never admit they wanted Saab’s technology to use (this you can confirm if you talk to engineers out of Trollhättan Sweden) they ran Saab down to the ground (other sales fell through) but when they were offered to sell to china they didn’t want them to have that technology for competition sake. But now Sweden, japan and China now own it - watch this space……
I can confirm from SYSMAX/Nitecore that the brand JETBeam will be put on hold from now.
SYSMAX is the designers behind the brand JETBeam. These designs were produced by a factory, that after a period of producing JETBEams designs started their own brand, Niteye. This factory also registred the trademark JETBeam in USA and mainland China, something that SYSMAX somehow hadn’t done. So SYSMAX got problems producing JETBeam lights because the production facility was producing Niteye lights at full capacity. And after they lost the trademark rights in USA and China they decided to put JETBeam on hold.
If you don’t own any of the B-series lights yet you should have a look at them. The principle of ‘Keep it simple stupid’ is high in these, I actually haven’t seen any other lights built this simple? (Except the Klarus clones that seems to be less priceworthy - lower quality at a higher price).