Chinese company blatantly ripping off B&W

I just saw this in the Inquirer.

In this world of lawsuits at the drop of a hat, how can these guys get away with this?

 

It is very difficult to enforce intellectual property rights against Chinese companies. This has been a longstanding matter of dispute between China and the US.

 

But this was being shown at CES!

 

Basically anyone can go ahead and do this but then that's when the affected party brings the legal action to seek redress for infringement of intellectual property rights and so on.

Now in the countries most of us come from, the minute you receive a request to cease production with a threat of subsequent action, the response would be to comply because taking action is fairly easy plus you have your legal advisers who would advise the same unless there some dispute over who had those rights which you intend to contest.

Elsewhere, this isn't so and some societies see imitation as flattery and you ought to feel honoured they imitated (what we call copied) your product.

It is presently a hot issue in the Pottery industry near where I live over here as well as in audio.

Regards,

 

I have a hard time believing flattery is the driving force in this situation, regardless of societal differences. $$$

 

The target customers are often those in the domestic market who has no idea who or what B&W is. Sony and JBL are also favorite victims of Chinese fake audio hardware.

 

Indeed. There's a Chinese company that makes mobile phones which are nearly-identical clones of Sony Ericsson's Walkman series. They vehemently denied accusations of ripping off SE, and "proved" this by pointing out that they didn't put SE's name on it.

 

interesting - they must manufacture a lot of speakers which find their way into white vans around the world ... http://www.forgings.com.tw/

 

A good friend just last night told me of a Chinese amp that uses 300B tubes, but that they are just for show and only have their filaments hooked up. Beneath the chasis is a solid state amp.

 

Some Chinese stuff is crap, but you will find rubbish everywhere. There are quite a few "proper" Chinese audio makers - ie Jungson. There is something like 300,000 millionaires in China and there is a huge market for hi - end audio.

Their quality (at least the good stuff) is right up there with the best. Scary ??
Exciting !!!

Michael

 

I think it's actually quite funny that someone would copy the B&W Nautilus design, because the look is IMHO the worst aspect of these speakers (and the price of course).

These fakes come with attached driver "tails", which seem to serve no technical purpose (unlike with the original Nautislus design). Ridiculous! It's like a Porsche 911 replica with VW Beetle mechanics and interior.

 

The same Chinese company that had pilfered router technologies from Cisco even produced an owners manual for one product that was word for word identical to the Cisco's manual. This company has now been chosen by British Telecom as one of its equipment suppliers. The US and EU are just paper tigers.

 

AFAIK, Cisco has most of their manufacturing done in China. I work with Cisco a lot and the engineers are worried because they now hear that their jobs will be in jeopardy because Cisco plans to outsource engineering to China as well as manufacturing.

 

$1M is not what it used to be. I am sure a good number of our American forum members are also millionaires.

 

OT: My favorite camera lens filters are made by B+W (Biermann and Weber, not Bowers & Wilkins) and there are floods of counterfeit filters on sale at eBay that sell for $15 (a third of what you'd spend from a low-price high-volume reputable camera shop) that come shipped from China. If it's the same company, maybe they'll get ambitious and start making faux BMW's.

 

My buddy who trades rare coins on eBay told me bogus Morgan Dollars from China are traded on eBay from time to time. He spotted the problems in no time due to the misspells found on the coins.

 

You mean Huawei? The company that even forgot to change "Cisco" to "Huawei" in their manuals. or Chery who copied one of GM's Daewoo (Chevrolet Int'l) designs mm by mm for a China market model? The parts interchange.

 

Exactly. Huawei was also founded by people with big connection to the military in that country.

 

Chinese plants can make good quality gear now but the lack if IP enforcement is bad for us and ultimately the Chinese economy.

 

One of more Chinese companies actually own KEF, Mission and Quad today.

 

looking at some of the equipment in the public profiles, they would want to be !!!

 

What goes around, comes around. They (the counterfeiters) will get their comeuppance some day.