Product copying issues:

I have at least three cases of my products that were copied:

50 years ago, I designed a police scanner radio that got popular.

A US company copied it and “improved” the high frequency RF section to make the PCB layout “cleaner”.

They did not understand that the strange layout was intentional.

They never made it to the market.

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30 years ago, I designed a money changer: ?A dollar bill input, and 3 quarters, 2 dimes and a nickel were dispensed.

The coin dispenser section sheetmetal had an unused accidental hole.

A US company copied it correctly, including the accidental hole, and marketed it.

A few years later I was inspecting a company in China and their engineering department was busy copying the copy, also including the hole.

What a coincidence!? There are zillions of companies in China, and I happened to evaluate that one.

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25 years ago I designed an RF transmitter with a digital memory to transmit recorded information on the FM broadcast band.

Again, a US company “improved and cleaned up” the RF section.? They never could get it to work properly.

Bertho

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To be clear not all Chinese companies copy and not all are dishonest.? And there are some very smart engineers there.? But one has to watch out and one of the reasons we now have this awful subscription model for CAD/CAM/CNC programs is because of examples like this:

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A few years ago a friend and I bought a couple of these TB6560 4 axis stepper driver boards.? (still sitting in a box)

Came with a CD with the user manual and schematics.?

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An one folder on the CD with MACH3 including a MACH3 license file.? The boards cost us less than a MACH3 license.? We didn’t even know that this was included.? Both of us had our own licensed copy of MACH3.? Alas my friend has since passed but I still use my licensed ?MACH3 on my JGRO CNC router which has a brand name USB SmoothStepper as an interface to stepper drivers from US companies.?

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For my Mill I switched LinuxCNC with the MESA 7i92H.? That too could be copied but hasn’t been.? Perhaps because LinuxCNC is intimidating for new users.? And who hasn’t visited a Linux forum and seen posting that are downright abusive when someone asks a simple question.

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John

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