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Your Kickstarter idea on sale in China before you’ve finished funding it (2016)
- BugsJustFindMe 8y agoComment thread from 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12724096 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12724096
- api 8y agoWow, it's like an AI that makes your product for you! Put up a project on Kickstarter and if it gets funded just buy the product from China and send it to your backers.
- anoncoward111 8y agoRight, except the AI is just really "cost-effective" labor and manufacturing, with some corners cut on small items like ethics, human rights, and materials.
- jacobush 8y agoSounds like most dystopian AI to me.
- ridgeguy 8y agoThis is why it's worthwhile filing a provisional patent application ($70). When your product takes off, you have a potential recourse if you're ripped off.
- meesterdude 8y agoYeah, but what does it take to actually create the provisional patent? Correct me if I'm wrong, but is it not $70 + thousands of dollars in legal fees?
- ridgeguy 8y agoFiling a provisional patent application costs $70 when filing as a microentity (common individual case). You can do it without an attorney (see Nolo Press and others for DIY help). After filing, the applicant has one year to file a utility application (what most people think of as a 'patent application') based on the provisional application. The provisional app is never published. If there's no derivative utility app, the provisional sinks out of sight. I forget the current utility filing fee, but it's a few hundred $ for an individual. Attorney's fees are in the few $K range and worth it if you have a valuable invention.
- chillacy 8y agoI’ve gotten them between 500 and 2000 dollars depending on the lawyer.
- curuinor 8y agoHow are you going to actually execute that and actually win in a Chinese court and get damages back from a Chinese corp?
- s73v3r_ 8y agoYou can't, but you might be able to get an injunction barring it's import
- fierro 8y agocheck out the story about TRX founder regarding this. You can listen to the How I Built This podcast about it, pretty interesting
- canada_dry 8y agohttps://one.npr.org/?sharedMediaId=533980744:534132874 https://one.npr.org/?sharedMediaId=533980744:534132874
- Animats 8y agoThis guy's sliding selfie stick probably isn't patentable. Telescoping selfie sticks are known. Parallel sliding telescoping devices are known; ladders are made that way. So it's an obvious combination of prior art.
- naasking 8y agoBut "handheld/miniaturised ladders" are not a thing, so even if the mechanism is the same, the application is different and that's probably enough for a patent.
- coldtea 8y ago>But "handheld/miniaturised ladders" are not a thing No, but there are tons of handled/miniaturised telescopic devices. Antennas in portable walkie talkies and radios are an obvious example, there are umbrellas like that, and tons of other things...
- naasking 8y agoAbsolutely, but you see patents for minor variations all the time. Like pharmaceutics that add a vitamin to an existing drug and get a whole new patent for it.
- chillacy 8y agoYou can own a patent for telescoping ladders and still have to pay royalties to the owners of the telescoping mechanism patent. And if anyone else makes a telescoping ladder with a beverage holder, they can patent that but you can go after them because your patent is more generic. More generic patents take more effort to get but are much more valuable because of this.
- comboy 8y agoEverything is a combination of prior art. That's how technology works.
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- pkaye 8y agoI wouldn't might sending the Chinese companies some ideas to implement but I guess what they was is validated ideas to reduce the risks.
- toast0 8y agoThis is terrible if you're trying to make money from your product, but it's great if you just want to make something that you can't find in the market. Although it would be nice to not have spent the time and money on prototypes and getting ready for a Kickstarter.
- userbinator 8y agoYet Sherman estimates that he has lost “hundreds of thousands” of dollars in potential revenue due to copycats. Just like piracy, it doesn't work that way. Far more people are willing to pay $10 for a selfie-stick phone case than $50. Alternatively, I've also seen a lot of Kickstarters which were simply "marketing" for an existing yet not-so-well-known product available from Alibaba, with a substantial markup added. This means there is already significant "innovation" happening in China, contrary to what a lot of people think --- they just haven't seen the true scale of what manufacturing in China looks like.
- lrem 8y agoYes, there are more people willing to pay $10 than people willing to pay $50. But, how many people willing to pay $50 would prefer to pay $10 and will switch once the option arises?
- kakarot 8y agoDoesn't matter. The economy should ultimately favor the buyer, not the seller.
- jfim 8y agoI disagree. The whole point of IP laws is that they provide a monetary incentive to innovate. If someone decides to take some time off to invent a new device and incur a financial risk to bring it to market, they should have the opportunity to profit from it. If new inventions are cloned within weeks in Asia and undercut the original inventor, where's the incentive to take risks on novel inventions? If the invention was trivial, why didn't the Chinese manufacturers come up with it in the first place?
- thatcat 8y agoWhy are you assuming that kickstarter projects would have any IP? It seems that a very low percentage of kickstarter projects would own IP on their devices considering the amount of time and cost involved in just applying for a patent. If no one owns a patent that covers the design then manufacturing a bunch of "copies" for a much lower price isn't illegal. It makes sense that kickstarter would be targeted as a source of not patented ideas to use.
- Animats 8y agoHence the proliferation of "X as a service".
- ondiekijunior 8y agoChina has enabled trading to be easier. I have a device, PlusX 5501, just patented across US and some African countries. Officially not launched. Chinese companies have over $800000 in sales for nearly the same device some with innovations not on the original device. As I work on the software front, my bet is that I will make my innovation on the software, potential name brand markup as well as support.
- hayksaakian 8y agoI tried googling plusx 5501 and didn't find anything relevant. I'm genuinely curious about what device you're talking about. Would you mind sharing?
- majia 8y agoVery boardly speaking, if something can be easily copied, it means the value-adding part is not comimg up with the idea, but the execution of it.
- dhnsmakala 8y agoI would think the opposite. If something is easily copied, it means the execution is simple. The value adding part is coming up with the idea that people want.
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoOr it could mean the value adddd part was all the design that went into it. Unfortunately, you can’t really kickstart something before it’s major design phase. Well, you can but the Kickstarter would be missing too many details to be convincing.
- mkio 8y agoHere's a nice documentary about foreigners moving their startup to Shenzen, where they can have same-day prototypes built and go into production immediately: https://youtu.be/SGJ5cZnoodY https://youtu.be/SGJ5cZnoodY
- andybak 8y agoAs somebody who toys with the idea that we'd ultimately be better off with minimal (or even no) IP protection in law this is a fascinating case study. Let's assume this situation remains in place for a long period and knowledge of it spreads widely. There'd be no more kickstarters like the one in the article. How does this play out in the long term? What kind of world are we left with?
- sytelus 8y agoAssume that there was no IP laws and everybody is freely allowed copy software/ideas/content as they see fit. Now developing a significant size software takes human hours. There is a fixed cost associated per human hour. Now let’s say your cost was $1M and it’s useful to 1M people. As there are no laws to protect IP, I can’t divide my cost to potential users and sell my software at $1 a pop. If I do that then I can’t recoup my cost. This means I must sell my software at $1M to richest possible single buyer. Or create a buyer group much like vacation condo model. In either case, no IP translates to scenario where only upper class of society can benefit by advancement in innovations. This is a massive philosophical “bug” in free software movement. It’s one of the goal to make software more accessible to everyone but under the reality of economics it does exactly the opposite. Once free software arrives on market, cheaper but slightly superior commercial versions will die out and only expensive superior versions will live benefiting more affluent class/organizations. The hybrid models where you provide enterprise support for money while keep things free is interesting but I am still not sure that it can be as powerful when you can use full power of economy to drive resource scaling at fullest extent. Most companies which use this model run extremely frugal and usually can’t afford large scale research and development activities. The things that has been described in article has already caused significant damages. There have been Chinese companies who received designs from innovators and started creating white label products. They didn’t had to worry about capital cost of arriving at that design or reliability to protect the brand reputation. They also didn’t care about doing R&D investments to evolve the product further. The focus was strictly on generating cheap knockoffs that produces short term profits and then move in to next victim. So in essence, your model of IP extinguished innovation, it’s evolutio and promoted cheap short lived knockoffs.
- sytelus 8y agoThis is very easily preventable if Amazon easily allowed the listing to be flagged for IP violation. Such multiple violations should cause supplier to be banned. It is quite surprising that foreign supplier just can dump whatever they want without any regards to IP in US markets via Amazon.
- lozenge 8y agoAmazon just doesn't care. They let hundreds of suppliers sign up with the same bank account details.
- zeist 8y agoDo they have any IP which prevents other from copying. Further if someone wants to enforce their IP they can just take it to court and get the writ to remove any fake listings from sites.
- kenned3 8y agoIs it just me, or is this article incredibly biased? here's a thought.. if you dont want your stuff counterfited, dont outsource it to china. The companies loved the idea of "cheap labour" and also want the underpaid employees to be honest and loyal to them? The "high price of low cost" at play here.. In this selfiestick, china is bad here.. but for a lot of the counterfits.. you sent china the moulds, templates, specs.. hmmm... Jack Ma is correct, a lot of the counterfits come from the same factory someone outsourced to.. so what is the difference between a "counterfit" and "genuine" article other then price?
- mtnGoat 8y agoOften times the counterfeit is using cheaper materials though.
- jfim 8y ago> so what is the difference between a "counterfit" and "genuine" article other then price? The counterfeit product has no incentive to ensure their product is of high quality, as long as it passes a cursory inspection before/after being bought. If you buy a brand X product and it fails after six months, you can complain to the company about it, you can post on social media to make it known that brand X doesn't last long, and so on. Brand X has an incentive to make sure their products last as long as customers expect them to, that they're safe, etc. as to not tarnish their brand image. If you get a FakeX branded product, who do you complain to when it breaks six months later? The AliExpress seller is long gone, the FakeX brand is replaced by FakeX+1 brand, and you're pretty much SOL. If the product has a major defect or safety issue, there are no recalls for FakeX branded products. How many hoverboards were recalled for being fire hazards?
- kenned3 8y agoif the genuine product was doing a proper QA there wouldnt be so many counterfits from the very same factory would there? Apple being a good example.. they have strict QA controlls and you never hear of a "second shift" creating fake iphones. Ever complain to a brand and have them do something about it? most dont. usually 'brand x' is more concerned with maximizing its profit margins, which is why they went to china in the first place (cheap labour, lax environmental laws...).
- microtherion 8y agoFar more frequently, I see Facebook ads for rebranded and heavily marked up Chinese products. In a way, the Western resellers are providing a service with their ad spending, in that I sometimes see products I like, trace them back to the original manufacturer, and buy them there.
- pascalxus 8y agoThe real problem is: why can they produce it 5 times cheaper? that's the real question you should ask yourself. The cost of production is much lower there because living costs are lower. The lower we can get our living costs here in the US, the more wealthier and productive and more competitive we'll be. instead of focusing on relentless gdp growth, we should instead focus on what we can do to reduce costs everywhere here at home, that will make us more competitive.
- Arbalest 8y agoHave to be careful with this line of thought. Are costs high because workers are paid too much, or because margins are too high on necessities that workers need?