Ever Had Your Invention / Design Copied? How did you Feel about it?

Hi,

Since 2004 I've been making a modest living selling a passive audio gadget. It's a unique design that, so far, hasn't been copied.

So, today I clicked on Ebay and found someone in Bulgaria (with suspicious looking account info, preferring 'western union') is making copies... The quality is nowhere near the original, but there's no disputing that it's a Bearinger-style clone. He's selling it for around 30% less (he's selling direct - I prefer to use agents).

Truth be told, I'm not bothered about losing income to him. My attitude is that it's an inferior product and, although his FB suggests he's making sales, it's not worth getting worked up about.

What does worry me is the precedent for bigger fish such as Bearinger...

Has anything you ever designed been ripped off outright? How did you feel about it? What would you do in my shoes? I have various IP granted by the patent office, but having the financial muscle to enforce is a separate issue. This particular guy will cost far more to pursue than he's losing me - directly, that is...

The sincerest form of flattery? Can't say my pulse rate at the moment suggests I'm feeling very flattered...

frickin Commies,

part of life. happens on many  different levels, some rips are huge, some not.

best solution is to not get stuck in time but to invent 10 more things before the main aorta pops,

what did my dad say about Lockheed,

"Pick my brains and pay me a Pittance"

drove him to drink,

had a patent filed at work one time, i get a copy and 2 other names of people who had nothing to do with it were attached, so been there, sold the T shirt,

you need a contract on this guy? i know some "People".

jus kiddin,

Two good friends of mine both had LPs taken from them and released under other guys' names - both with majors (I engineered many of the tracks on both).

One friend felt wounded and embarrassed to tell anyone (his one came out on a Warner sub label). To this day the record sells and few people know he was involved.

The other guy shouted about it from the rooftops. For a few months it seemed to be the hot conversation in the music industry. He in turn got a deal from a major and made a nice career.

What's this got to do with my situation? Very little. Just mentioning it out of interest. Male pride can be a bitch - friend in scenario 1 could've capitalised...

thermionic said:

Hi,

Since 2004 I've been making a modest living selling a passive audio gadget. It's a unique design that, so far, hasn't been copied.

So, today I clicked on Ebay and found someone in Bulgaria (with suspicious looking account info, preferring 'western union') is making copies... The quality is nowhere near the original, but there's no disputing that it's a Bearinger-style clone. He's selling it for around 30% less (he's selling direct - I prefer to use agents).

Click to expand...

Bearinger?

Truth be told, I'm not bothered about losing income to him. My attitude is that it's an inferior product and, although his FB suggests he's making sales, it's not worth getting worked up about.

What does worry me is the precedent for bigger fish such as Bearinger...

Click to expand...

Even back in the day Behringer generally copied category leaders, or strong products in market segments he wasn't competing in yet. 

Has anything you ever designed been ripped off outright?

Click to expand...

yes

How did you feel about it?

Click to expand...

Pissed off

What would you do in my shoes?

Click to expand...

Don't know enough about your situation.

If you have a patent in the market where he is infringing , a letter from your lawyer putting him on notice may suffice, but you don't want to start and then drop it, so be ready to pursue it seriously.

I have various IP granted by the patent office, but having the financial muscle to enforce is a separate issue. This particular guy will cost far more to pursue than he's losing me - directly, that is...

Click to expand...

Yup, that is the catch 22 about patents, it is just a license to sue.. 

and even with a patent you don't always win in court. My past employer (Peavey) who I assigned seven patents to during my time working there, sued Behringer over their copy of one of my inventions (FLS), After several years in court and I don't know how many dollars spent, the judge effectively declined to rule on it, giving them a pass...  :'(

The sincerest form of flattery? Can't say my pulse rate at the moment suggests I'm feeling very flattered...

Click to expand...

They also copied a small Peavey mixer (RQ200) almost verbatim, they even copied the exact numbers off my spec sheet... But the mixer faceplate/layout was not protected IP so there was nothing we could do about it. IIRC Mackie didn't even win the trade dress lawsuit when Behringer copied their 8 bus console.

FWIW Behringer wasn't the only company who copied my FLS, there was also a small spanish company who made a similar EQ, but they didn't sell many (any?) in the US, and as far as I could tell, not very many in Europe either.

I like to think that karma will ultimately deal with people who make bad life choices.

JR

Don't bother fighting back.

I think I mentioned this before. Somebody in US used my trademark (which was also registered in US). I challenged. They said sorry. Cost me 5,000 bucks. Couple of years ago my lawyer sent me a statement saying I was on a couple of hundred bucks credit. I told him to keep it and buy me a drink next time I am there to ''forgeddabboudid''.

watch Telstar, the movie.

Joe Meek takes a shotgun to his landlord, and then self because he is broke.

2 weeks later his case is settled in France and royalties for the #1 song are released.

he could have settled out of court for 50 grand but he blew off the court date,



OT: John Roberts, do you know who designed that Peavey 6 channel powered mixer?

i see that old mixer everywhere we go,

the seem to last forever and they don't sound half bad either.

however, the new version seems to have changed into something different,

smaller, lighter, but not the same sound, Class D?

CJ said:

OT: John Roberts, do you know who designed that Peavey 6 channel powered mixer?

i see that old mixer everywhere we go,

the seem to last forever and they don't sound half bad either.

however, the new version seems to have changed into something different,

smaller, lighter, but not the same sound, Class D?

Click to expand...

If you are talking about the XR600 topbox powered head, I was over the engineering group when we did the XR600"D" generation redesign (D for digital efx), and XR 600E (?)  a few years later.

Back then the power amp was simple 2x300W class A/B

The generation after my involvement went to Class G/H (multi-rail) for more power.

I would not be surprised if modern version is using class D amp if the price is finally cheaper than old school. I had an engineer working on a class D amp module way back then, but he was never able to get the price right. Peavey used a pretty sharp pencil when costing out products like that. 

=======

The mixer front end was pretty simple, with one knob control that varied both the gain and mix level,,, While these seem like pretty simple products there was a lot of engineering effort to make them easy to use, hard to kill, etc.

For my XR600 anecdote (I have more than one), I recall doing a generational redesign, and my senior engineer decided to redesign the channel gain/level circuit to improve the kill when turned down. It was not trivial to do everything and deliver deep attenuation when muted by turing down.  However as an unintended consequence of his new improved circuit, when the gain/level control was set to 12 o'clock the de facto standard operating level for users world wide, the new design delivered about 1.5dB less gain... No big yup, but when you combine the new  -1.5dB nominal level from each channel, in series with the same new improved circuit in the master section delivering -1.5 dB. the new generation XR600 was pitting out a combined 3 dB less gain overall, when channels and master were set perfectly to 12 O'clock.

Almost immediately upon shipping these the complaints from customers and dealers started rolling in, asking why the new power modules made less power???  Despite me assuring them that the new version used the exact same power amps module, they were certain that I must be lying to them.. (got to love those Peavey customers, and dealers, and distributors, and... ).

We ended up tooling up a new gain/level pot so the new improved circuit delivered the exact same gain at 12 o'clock as the old XR600s did.. Not a big deal when using 10 thousand pots a month or whatever those were running, but it was a little surprising how ingrained the 12 o'clock rule was in everybody's mind.

I can only guess who designed the very first XR600. That was way before my time (I worked on like the 4th and 5th redesigns). I'll bet Jack Sondermeyer, the guy who designed the CS800 was involved, and it was probably his senior engineer doing the leg work. That was (is?) an important product for Peavey.   

JR