This was what I was referring to. Not a clone, just a bit of “it works, let’s use it”
Iffn it was blue/green, azure, algae, cyan, cerulean it could have worked.
Butt no , it is a copy.
C’mon, everyone, just chillax.
Here, have a nice musical interlude before posting anything else…
oh yeah. calmed my ass!
Wrong. It is indeed a sort of club, but it’s for all members that continue to follow the rules that they agreed to when signing up for an account here. I would prefer to think of it as a “nice people’s club”.
Wrong. Fighting and politics and controversies are not allowed, and nobody is allowed to continue as a member if they insist on being rude, whether they are new or old. I have enforced this rule many times in the past by banning “old” members. And as in the case of this thread, action is also taken against new members.
I’ll continue to leave this thread open for a little longer with the expectation that nobody else will try to exploit it as an opportunity for rudeness.
How much extra are you willing to pay for the original? 1? 10? This is actually a fascinating question to me, I may open a poll.
That whole incident was a dark day for BLF as far as I’m concerned. Manker made a big effort to participate in the community, going as far as donating $1400 in sales revenue to Old-Lumens. The community turned around and didn’t just welcome their flashlights being cloned, but ran a group buy and told them it was their own fault for having “discriminatory pricing” because they required their dealers to follow MAPs.
Yep, no disagreement here.
I get it, how sneaky it was, but still, it was almost comical how blatant and in-your-face the copying was. And probably why I’ll never have a UT light…
(Not even UT-branded Sofirn lights, even with their blessing.)
I voted in your poll. :partying_face:
The poll has 54 reads and 4 votes. I am concerned a certain demographic is not representing itself.
Not sure I ever remember BLF ripping someone off and having it cloned in China.
Seems like quite a bit of innovation comes out of the BLF community, and is in the most part shared at little or no cost.
Copying is bad, but what’s copying?
All tail switches are copies of the very first one?
All triple color lights are illegal copies of the first one?
Intellectual Property (IP) can be patented to protect it, although China does tend to ignore IP. It gives some protection for novel ideas. Otherwise why spend time being creative, when everyone then copies you, and you end up wasting your investment.
As for designs, well a design is a design. Watch makers all copy each others designs with minor changes, so why not the same for torches? Generally in business, companies copy any good ideas as the starting point for their own products, that’s how it works. What differentiates them is how well they execute the product. Apple are known for taking time to work out the details, to get it right, others copy Apple, but they don’t put in so much effort and the result might look like an Apple product, but it’s inferior.
On the one hand, plagiarism is a terrible thing to do. On the other hand, virtually all progress is done by building on the work of others — standing on the shoulders of giants. People take an existing thing, improve on it, and then there’s a better thing.
So it’s complicated and nuanced, and nothing as simple as a “yes” or “no” can really do the topic justice.
The way I see it, some of the important factors are:
- Power. The cook at McDonald’s is held to different standards than the state governor. Or as Spiderman put it, with great power comes great responsibility. More influence means being more restricted in one’s actions, because those actions have a bigger effect. So it’s extra important to be careful, courteous, respectful, and generally make sure those actions are positive. Conversely, less power means less responsibility and more individual agency.
- Sentience. More sentient means more rights… like, a tree has fewer rights and protections than your 3rd-grade math teacher. On the far end of the spectrum, inanimate objects have virtually no rights. Plants are somewhat more protected, but only a little. Animals have more rights than plants. Children have more rights than animals. Adults have more rights than children. And presumably, post-human or super-human beings would have more rights than humans.
- Behavior. Good and positive behavior provides more rights and protections, while bad or harmful behavior tends to forfeit rights and protections. We treat saints differently than criminals, and treat companies differently based on how much they’re enriching the world versus draining resources from others.
- Degree of similarity. Blatant ripoffs are typically pretty rude, but taking a design and improving on it is often beneficial. Add some value, don’t just make exact copies.
So, an individual or a small company would be pretty high on the “rights” scale, and pretty low on the “responsibilities” scale. They are generally to be protected. Small companies tend to behave quite intelligently and can be reasoned with. If you want a clone of a small-company light, just ask the company if they’d be willing to make it or maybe collaborate with you.
But a large company with lots of power is much lower on the “rights” scale, and much higher on the “responsibilities” scale. They are held to higher standards, and not generally protected. The bigger the company, the less it can be reasoned with. They grow toward money in the same way that trees grow toward sunlight. It’s not generally a conscious decision as much as a matter of automatic instinctual behavior.
So a small company cloning a large company’s product is typically not so bad, especially when the larger company has already refused to listen to the people and do what the people want. The tree’s roots are being ignored, so they can be justified in getting together to start a new tree.
However, when a big company actually behaves well and ignores the money-colored “sunlight” in favor of maintaining a positive relationship with its root community, the big company still acts more like a small company and thus can expect better treatment than other large companies.
Then on top of all this is the degree of similarity. The more similar to the original, the less justified a clone is. And the more unique the clone is, the less justification it needs.
I hope this is making sense.
The idea is that there are some complex factors which are all along different scales, and these things combine to determine how good or bad it is when someone copies someone else’s design. There are at least four independent variables mentioned here… Power, sentience, behavior, and how much is changed during the copying process. … and that’s not even a complete list.
Basically, when the big fish does it to the little fish, it’s usually not okay. But when the little fish does it to the big fish, sometimes it’s okay or even positive… especially if the new design improves on the old one. But it really depends on the details.
I’m MUCH more concerned with patent trolls vs someone taking a proven product and releasing their version of it. https://www.eff.org/issues/resources-patent-troll-victims
I will buy the original.
Well, you’re in the minority.
Why else did AliExpress grow that fast?
Because the majority goes for cheaper alternatives
Yes, the entire intellectual property system, uh, needs some work. It has issues. Even when attempting to do “copyleft” instead of copyright, ensuring that work is open and stays open, it still requires making copyrights and attempting to enforce them.
Copyrights in general last way too long, largely thanks to Disney and their efforts to retain full ownership of fairly ancient ideas like Mickey Mouse. Copyright should probably go back to a few decades maximum.
And then there’s the patent system, which really wasn’t designed for an internet age where things go obsolete just a few years after they’re invented… and where the patent office is massively overloaded with applications, most of which are trivial or obvious to those in the field but appear meaningful to everyone else. And the issue of parasitic patent trolls, buying up intellectual property for the sole purpose of suing people, without ever contributing anything of value to the world. These work directly against the innovation which patents were designed to protect.
So it’d be nice if we could redesign all this legal stuff to get it in line with the principles outlined in my previous post… basically protecting and rewarding those who are small and/or beneficial, while making things harder for those who are large and/or predatory.
Flashlight manufacturing has low quantities in comparation with other goods that were used as examples in comments. Regular batch seems to be 5000-10000pcs.
You need to separate spendings in categories. For low quantities, development can take great % (in each item self-cost), and copying design can make things worth. Can you reverse-engineer original driver hardware? Is it good idea that will save development time and improve quality? Not sure. Can you copy original UI? Same questions.
It looks strange but same things can be met in machining. Copying is never cost-effective way, unless this is manker vs utorch story (one factory, same people, same machines, same setups, different code for laser engraver :laughing: ). Please believe me, I have seen tons of ussr-made goods that were based on foreign prototypes. They were not able to be great, because copying was direct - thats why so many ussr military device parts have imperial sizes. Those who had to copy goods could not turn on their head and change sizes to more common. As result, parts were hard in manufacturing, and total shotage came further.
Just imagine that flashlight consists from 100-200 unique parts, and if youll try to copy all of them you wont get goods cheaper than origin. Some parts (rubber seals, optics, glass lenses) require great MOQ, you need to get same vendors as origin brand or base on parts that are available on market. Those parts that can be machined also take much time in setup, based on machine abilities. Second batch for brand owner will cost less that first batch for “designer”, and last one will met much more QC problems.
Summury:
Each manufacture should make decisions according to his own abilities.
Tesla model 3 have 4416 21700 cells inside. Dont you wont to copy one in your garage?
No.
Because local rules are killing local markets, but governments have great inertia and not able to limit international net-sellers fast.
If you look at goods reviews, you can see that aliexpress is very popular in ex-soviet countries, south america, small EU coutries. But they have low sellings in countries where full amazon services are available.
There’s a ton of apple and samsung clones, I’m not in the slightest tempted to purchase one. The quality and support just doesn’t compare. The other thing these companies do is make sure they stay ahead of the competition and don’t get complacent. Interestingly, there’s some popular manufacturers producing 18 led lights. Who copied who? Will it drive to produce bigger and better? Will these companies take a hit from their competitors or will the presence of copy cats draw attention and bring in more purchases? All I’ve seen from a lot of these designs getting “copied” is that a small tweak leads to more sales. If you tweak first(successfully), you win.
I will go the original since their effort in making one.When the original maker is making a good quality product,i like to support them for them to continue innovate and producing quality service.
I will not go for original when they price is way too expensive,just for a sake of a brand name(trend or some fashion) or something.
If it is cheaper alternatives,good for market,good for consumer.It will also forces original prices to drop.Its a win win for me.