$345,000 in Two Months Ripping off a Product

[iacas]

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/30/a-24-year-old-made-345000-by-beating-kickstarters-to-market.html

[Lihu]

Cool, and inspiring. . .

[Jeremie Boop]

That's a bit disconcerting to me. The idea that people don't see a problem with ripping off ideas that others have put out there to make quick profits off of just shows how little ethics there are these days. "Hey, let me scroll through kickstarter to see what ideas are hot so I can steal them to make money" is just sad. I'm sure that it was something that happened previously, but I don't know that it was quite so easy to find products that are garnering decent to significant interest as it is these days with crowdfunding sites.

21 minutes ago, Lihu said:

Cool, and inspiring. . .

Seems strange that someone in your field would say something that could/would be considered IP theft is "cool, and inspiring". Of course, I'm not exactly versed in these types of things so it's possible I'm way off on my reaction here. Maybe this is just normal and expected. I just know that if it happened to me it would make me pretty upset.

[Lihu]

Just now, Jeremie Boop said:

That's a big disconcerting to me. The idea that people don't see a problem with ripping off ideas that others have put out there to make quick profits off of just shows how little ethics there are these days. "Hey, let me scroll through kickstarter to see what ideas are hot so I can steal them to make money" is just sad. I'm sure that it was something that happened previously, but I don't know that it was quite so easy to find products that are garnering decent to significant interest as it is these days with crowdfunding sites.

One issue is that many people come up with the same idea simultaneously. Crowdfunding is great, but if two people come out with similar or the same product, then which one do you choose?

 

Just now, Jeremie Boop said:

Seems strange that someone in your field would say something that could/would be considered IP theft is "cool, and inspiring". Of course, I'm not exactly versed in these types of things so it's possible I'm way off on my reaction here. Maybe this is just normal and expected. I just know that if it happened to me it would make me pretty upset.

The part that is cool is making the money on the outset. That's pretty much all you can expect these days.

Sure, I hope IP protection improves. . .a trade war would definitely throw any progress out the door, though.

[iacas]

22 minutes ago, Lihu said:

Cool, and inspiring. . .

And sleazy and scummy and possibly illegal.

1 minute ago, Lihu said:

One issue is that many people come up with the same idea simultaneously. Crowdfunding is great, but if two people come out with similar or the same product, then which one do you choose?

Dude, that's not at all what happened here.

[Jeremie Boop]

5 minutes ago, Lihu said:

One issue is that many people come up with the same idea simultaneously. Crowdfunding is great, but if two people come out with similar or the same product, then which one do you choose?

 

The part that is cool is making the money on the outset. That's pretty much all you can expect these days.

Sure, I hope IP protection improves. . .a trade war would definitely throw any progress out the door, though.

Except he isn't coming up with the same idea at the same time as the other people, he's specifically looking for products that have interest and copying them. 

 

3 minutes ago, iacas said:

And sleazy and scummy and possibly illegal.

Which is exactly how it came off to me. He's specifically targeting ideas that are popular so he can flood the market with knockoffs which could potentially ruin the market for those who had the original idea. 

[Lihu]

Just now, iacas said:

And sleazy and scummy and possibly illegal.

Yeah. That it is. . .

These types of products require no software, and are easily copied. It's kind of like tens of thousands of "Make America Great Again" hats that were clearly marked "Made in <a country other than USA>".

Product protection is pretty much hard to do, and the hope is to make money on the first wave. Sounds like the originators made money, not as much as hoped, but still made some money.

[iacas]

10 minutes ago, Lihu said:

Yeah. That it is. . .

@Lihu, seriously man, I like you and all that, I think you're a nice guy, but stuff like this can drive people up the wall. You said it was "cool and inspiring". Did you not even read the post or watch the video? I mean, did you only read the headline before posting?

[Lihu]

Just now, iacas said:

@Lihu, seriously man, I like you and all that, I think you're a nice guy, but stuff like this can drive people up the wall. You said it was "cool and inspiring". Did you not even read the post or watch the video? I mean, did you only read the headline before posting?

I develop products for a living and know that it could be much worse! The idea that the originator made some money is good.

One example shows a chair/hammock on Dutch TV and kind of demonstrates my point that if someone develops a product that is easily copied, it will be copied. The issue is if you make money before the market gets swamped. He made some.

I agree that the original inventor should be getting some fraction of the money, but it's impossible to stop people from making minute changes then selling essentially the same product.

As for the people who purchase stuff from Alibaba, they still had to advertise on social media. The time it took for them to write up something and work through the shipping logistics kind of justifies them making the money?

I'll grant that the inventor should be making money on every product, and that is something I really hope will improve. However, it's not illegal to duplicate a concept, it is only illegal to duplicate the exact specific claimed features of a product if the specific country enforces patents. The funny part is there are also millions of ways of working around patents. Large US corporations do it all the time. They hire engineers to duplicate competitors products.

Of course, I establish more critical rules for my own behavior, but the fact that social media and the fact that Alibaba already has a lot of products for sale (and resale) is "cool and inspiring".

[iacas]

5 minutes ago, Lihu said:

Of course, I establish more critical rules for my own behavior, but the fact that social media and the fact that Alibaba already has a lot of products for sale (and resale) is "cool and inspiring".

I don't agree.

At all.

And I am surprised that you seem to value IP and copyright laws - and morals - so little.

[Lihu]

4 minutes ago, iacas said:

I don't agree.

At all.

And I am surprised that you seem to value IP and copyright laws - and morals - so little.

I value and practice them accordingly, but have very little faith in the rest of the world.

I've been around engineers for so long. People even steal ideas and patent them for themselves all the time. It's really bad. In some cases, they are encouraged to do so.

It's terrible.

[iacas]

12 minutes ago, Lihu said:

I value and practice them accordingly, but have very little faith in the rest of the world.

You called it cool and inspiring, @Lihu.

[Lihu]

1 minute ago, iacas said:

You called it cool and inspiring, @Lihu.

Okay, let me change that to "unethical and profitable". Yuck. . .

[nevets88]

Fidget Cube is still late for delivery, now it's not till February if I'm reading it correctly - didn't think the market for these things was so big.

https://www.antsylabs.com/products/fidget-cube

Guess the moral is somehow make sure you can get the product to market before someone else can co-opt your product but that circumvents the gist of crowdfunding. Just verifies also how antiquated the patent process is.

On a kind of related note, there's the Kickstarter project Roost, it makes a good laptop stand. Now I was going to buy it but checked Amazon to see what its competitors were like and found something more suited to my needs, similar quality for half the price. So even if you're first to market, people are going to know there are going to be cheaper knockoffs or if none,  wait. Competition is fierce.

[MRR]

This is horrible, but far from unique.

1) Using Kickstarter sites allows a company to raise a certain amount of funds based on pre-sale.  This jackoff knockoff company did not take away any of those sales.

2) Major companies do this all the time.  It is hardly a coincidence that the Mustang, Charger, and Camero somehow look more like each other than any other car year after year, or that several animated films will come out in a year from different houses that are nothing like anything seen before, but are just like each other.

3) To the left, companies have been around for decades that buy up patents and wait until a better company tries to actually help society by making a product, then sue that new company.

As much as I dislike everything about this person, I know he is not alone.  He's basically selling bootleg DVDs, but ripping off the little man instead of a corporation.

[Lihu]

16 minutes ago, nevets88 said:

Fidget Cube is still late for delivery, now it's not till February if I'm reading it correctly - didn't think the market for these things was so big.

https://www.antsylabs.com/products/fidget-cube

Guess the moral is somehow make sure you can get the product to market before someone else can co-opt your product but that circumvents the gist of crowdfunding. Just verifies also how antiquated the patent process is.

Yes, and I've become really jaded.

It takes forever to get the patents specific enough to have them allowed. then it takes months for the examiner to finally approve them. All in all up to 3 years, and for many products that's pretty much end of life.

How can you protect an idea for the duration of the product?
 

Quote

On a kind of related note, there's the Kickstarter project Roost, it makes a good laptop stand. Now I was going to buy it but checked Amazon to see what its competitors were like and found something more suited to my needs, similar quality for half the price. So even if you're first to market, people are going to know there are going to be cheaper knockoffs or if none,  wait. Competition is fierce.

 

Yeah, pretty fierce because the pace of product development and innovation is getting much faster.

The real question is if someone comes up with an idea, but someone else spent all the effort to make the tools who should get the profit. How should it be divided?

[iacas]

22 minutes ago, nevets88 said:

Fidget Cube is still late for delivery, now it's not till February if I'm reading it correctly - didn't think the market for these things was so big.

They've shipped 80% of their December orders. They had a brief delay - not unusual in Kickstarter world - but it's hardly been anything like what other projects have had. Their March orders will ship by the end of February.

[MRR]

5 minutes ago, Lihu said:

It takes forever to get the patents specific enough to have them allowed. then it takes months for the examiner to finally approve them. All in all up to 3 years, and for many products that's pretty much end of life.

How can you protect an idea for the duration of the product?

You cannot; at least the way things are now.  Just like the wagon industry tanked when automobiles became standard, or my father's travel agency never recovered from the internet, it might be time for a new model.

One thing is certain, nobody can steal quality.  A major company in my area, at least to my knowledge, does not patent any of their products.  They simply produce them far better than anyone else can and have no real competition at this time.