You’re asking how I feel about thievery? About someone not having the skill or respect to create something original, like what I offer with a sense pride and accomplishment to people that support my artistic creations? About capitalizing on my hard work and financial risk?
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
I don’t have any ethical or moral obligation to buy from the first person to come up with something. If another person or company can create a product that through lower price or better features entices me to buy theirs instead, more power to them.
The payment the first person to create something gets is the chance to sell it first. If it’s easy enough for someone else to clone it and get it to market at the same time, there wasn’t much time or effort invested in the first place.
I'm all about value for money.
If that means clones or copies or fakes, so be it.
As others have said, I don’t mind an aesthetic “knockoff” as long as it doesn’t try to pass itself as the original. And in the history of flashlights, there have even been several times that the “copycat” light was better than the light it was a copy of. I welcome that. 
Whut’s constitutes a “premium flashlight design”? They’re mostly just cylindrical tubes with one shiny end and one clicky end. Even decent lights are pretty much dime-a-dozen in the Grand Scheme Of Things.
I personally think that the US government should use the rampant, unchecked counterfeiting and exportation of counterfeit goods, and theft of American intellectual property, as a reason to put a tactical trade embargo on China and any other country that allows it until they can get their act together. The US government’s job is to protect American interests, not Chinese businesses’/government interests.
That said, I’m not talking about flashlights that are “inspired by” some type of flashlight, or which are one company’s “answer to” some other company’s flashlight. I’m talking bootlegs. If you go on ebay and search for a Spyderco pocket knife, a ton of the results will be knives that look almost exactly like the real thing….but aren’t. If you go on Amazon and search for SanDisk SD cards, a ton of the results will look just like the real thing…but aren’t. It is a deceptive business practice to take someone’s money and give them a fake imitation of what they thought they were buying, not to mention the theft of intellectual property that occurred in the production of the product.
The problem with patents is, they stop innovation.
But just copying a light is bad, please use some creativity
How is that?
Simple Wavien / RLT collars. If it weren’t for the stupid patent, we would have throwers that throw twice as much candelas. The Acebeam K75 would be a 3MCD thrower instead of 1.6MCD. The Emisar D1S would be a 600kcd thrower with the White Flat. The Jaxman Z1 would do 800kcd.
When they stifle competition, or are abused. Eg, light + filter (eg, red, ZWB2, etc.) is pretty obvious and common-sense, but some schmo has a patent on the idea (so much for “non-obvious”) and keeps you from buying a light with a preinstalled filter.
Or Apple’s “rectangle with rounded corners” design patent. Umm, doesn’t that describe most phones in existence?
A lot of patents seem to be vomited out pretty willy-nilly just to get that throughput without bothering to engage too many brain-cells, that should and would fail the common-sense test.
I’m not even going to touch on patent-trolls who just buy patents, sit on them, and sue those who might (or might not!) be “infringing”.
No pollie would even think to add a use-it-or-lose-it condition to patents, to either use them or license them out in good faith, or they expire within a much much shorter timeframe, to prevent patent-trolls from stifling innovation.
Eg, anyone who buys rights to a patent MUST put the idea into production within 1yr, or it reverts to the original owner with no repayment. So Troll, Inc. can’t just buy someone’s patent on a shiny can-opener, do nothing with it, but then sue anyone whose design comes close to said can-opener. If you buy it, you damned well better manufacture can-openers within 1yr, using the idea in the patent, or it reverts back to Joe Inventor for free.
Nah, that’d make too much sense…
Couldn’t the argument be made that without the ability to patent inventions that require resources to develop, there would be no LED’s to begin with, since no company would want to invest their resources into something they weren’t able to monopolize the sale of, so as to recover the development costs and grow their business?
I have a bit of a conscience when it comes to this.
I would rather pay a little more and get the real thing… unless the real thing is way overpriced. Usually cheap knockoffs are about as cheap as you pay. But sometimes a well made distinctively designed item can be priced too high, where a copy-cat can make something pretty well decent in quality for the price. I don’t have a problem buying that… because you’re not buying something of the same quality. For instance, the arena of custom knives. Sometimes a knife is just so stratospheric in price… and then along comes a Chinese knock-off that’s actually pretty good. The original seller may cry that his sales are being cut into, but that’s not really true. If their rare knife is so expensive, the people who buy the knock-off wouldn’t be buying it anyway. PLUS… in a way it’s kind of free advertising. Because people with money will prefer to buy the “best”… and an attractive knock-off may alert them to the item.
But for the most part, I see a similar thing in the flashlight arena. Anyone remember the GatLight Well, UniqueFire made a copy of it. And it was crap… aside from actually looking pretty decent. And now there’s a laser copy as well (green and red). The Gatlight is seriously expensive, so I highly doubt those who buy the cheapies would buy the real thing.
Torches. Knives. Clothes. Handbags. Whatever.
The originals are ALWAYS overpriced, for thename mainly
Possibly a few are worth the money.
There are several levels of humans. Tham that have, and cosst is irrelavant.
They want. They buy.
Second are the “Wannabe’s” Would like to. so save up and buy such.
Just to say Look what I’ve got.
Thirdly. The workers. we work, we earn. But not enough to buy the above.
So. Thankfully. Chinese and others make copies. Of differing quality levels.
Which those people buy. WHich gives them an item they want. that works.
and the better quality ones are out of their reach. They happy.
Then you get the rest of us.
We mentally say to ourselves. I will spend. X amount of money per month on this hobby.
(Usually have several hobbies going at once Me 3x
Pick the ones with middle quality materials. Internals and blade steels etc.
And we happy too.
just be glad that such occur. As long as not straight clones. named and boxed per original.
Ganzo. SRM. Harnds. Y-Start, and a few others. ALL give good quality items in blades.
That do a good job.
What is there to whinge about.
Full gambut of market is covered. We ALL happy. Hooray for China I say.
I’ve got $460/370/ and 10 to $35 Knives. $165 to $2.35 del, Torches.
They all do job.
Straight clones. Yes SOME like to kid themselves. Most are practical.
This can be an interesting post.
Giving the average persons opinions on clones, copies and the why’s.
I love the rationalizations some of you champion.
Chris
The BLF Lantern will surely be ripped off in short order once it’s up for sale. I wonder if DBSAR and his fellow collaborators on the project will feel “complemented” by the fakes?
Read through some of this and it becomes apparent that the evolution of the LED was the child of many mothers.
Light-emitting diode - Wikipedia.
And so if a single patent could have stifled or stopped that handing off of the ball for improvement, the final product would probably be developed slower and at a higher cost.
Competition breeds improvements, always has always will.
Taking an idea and adding improvements to it is as old as humans.
Patents may not be evil, but ones that have auto-renew into the next century may as well be.
Example here.
Delivered yesterday.
HARNDS Knight. Folder, Sand colour handle.
3 in blade. Full handle (No cutouts for weight reduction) Just nice.
Good pattern on scales for grip. NICE blade shape. VERY sharp out of box.
Very… the bitch cut me. and I’m a knife man for 70 yrs.
Oh.
The advertising and pictures of. Show Gimping on top of blade etc.
Mine is completely devoid of any gimping. Smooth steel, everywhere??
Economising. or forgot.
Looks, feels, CUTS (chuckle). So nice it would have to be a copy of somebody elses model.
8cr14MOV. Average working chinese steel. Will just need more steeling to keep edge going…
I’ve got very expensive chef’s White paper. Blue paper. VG10 etc, Japanese steel blades too.
and, prior to. used 440c. AUS8/10 for decades. Not a problem. Still do.
They all fine for normal usage.
European blades and names still use them and quite happy to do so.
Copies DO fill a needed hole in things.
But. at $18AUD Del to Aust.
I have a very nice, well usable knife (My fav, size) at a sensible toy price.
This months pension spent hey.
Above. Maybe feels ripped off. But… This way others get to use HIS design and feel, try it.
Some can only afford that or nothing.
SOME buy copies to try, feel etc first. b4 outlaying full price.
Look at it from both sides hey.
I’d rather have a nice copy of a great design/build. Than nothing.
Many patents are legit but many patents are there just to thwart progress and competition like how Apple patented cell phone with round corners. There are so many patent trolls nowadays that technological advancement is held hostage by them. For example AMD and Nvidia created a patent mine field that no other companies dare step in it for fear of accidentally stepping on patent landmines. That’s why Intel has to either pay billions to license from AMD or Nvidia to develop any kind of gpus for fear of triggering huge lawsuits even if Intel employs a much more competent engineering talent than the other two and had no intention or need to copy from either one of them.
Another example is Huawei being 2 years ahead of the US (estimated by experts) in 5G tech and owning the most 5G patents in the world. Huawei is now considering charging American companies a hefty fee to use their 5G patent portfolio as a response to the US’s push for a global ban on the company. These patents will serve as insurmountable obstacles for US companies to catch up and become self reliant in 5G tech. The US senate is proposing to classify Huawei as a hostile foreign agency or terrorist group so they can use or ignore Huawei patents and not allow Huawei to sue in US court. In a way this sucks for Huawei since they spent by far the biggest R&D budget for 5G development (they are currently the 2nd largest overall R&D spender in the world), but at the same time I hope this proposal goes through because it will awaken the world to see how overboard the world have gone with patents and how patents and patent laws have been manipulated to kill competition, prevent newcomers to the market, and ultimately hinder progress for everybody. I believe the idea of patents is good but it has to be applied reasonably. Too many patents are created for the sole purpose of creating landmines and there are also those individuals that file countless patents for all kinds of ideas they can think of hoping someday a large company with the capability to do so will make something similar so the individual can sue the company and get rich.
I think Wavien collar is a very simple idea and is very easy to make. I imagine many people might have thought of the same thing but is held back by the patent. If any Chinese company or even American company is brave enough to ignore this patent and make a flashlight with such a collar, I will buy it right away.
The On The Road(OTR) flashlights seem to copy Olights exclusively right down to the excellent pocket/hat clip. Internally, they do differ. I have a couple of OTR’s and they haven’t given me a moment of grief. On top of that, I bought them ON SALE! Kind of hard to find an Olight at what I consider a good sale price. C’mon, they’re both made in China. If OTR can give me a product equal or superior to that of Olight for significantly less, I’m in!
How would anyone posting in this thread feel if you came up with the idea for a light or any other project that you really believed in, invested your savings or took out a loan. Formed a LLC, Spent a year developing it, talking to suppliers, designing it, marketing it, bought and made a website etc etc and after a year or two of work its finally available for sale. And people love it! You cant keep it on the shelves! All your hard work is finally justified. Soon you wont have to eat ramen anymore
Then three weeks later its avilable on aliexpress
How would you feel? Would you be flattered by the imitation? Would you say “wow I’m glad I wasnt able to afford a patent lawyer sp I didnt stifle innovation”? “I’m glad people who cant afford to buy my product can now pay someone else for all my blood, sweat and tears”?
There’s someone in the community developing a driver for the past year at least, in his spare time, that aims to fill a much needed hole in what’s available off the shelf currently. His biggest fear? That BLF is going to take it and have it cloned in China. So much so that he questioned whether he should even continue. You want to know what stifles innovation? The attitudes and innovations shared in this thread. You dont care about innovation. You care about your wallet and you want to save a couple bucks at the expense of the designer’s livelihood.