I've often seen speaker cabinets that are similar to (or "inspired" by) well known brands. But recently I've noticed some that are a direct copy.

There is a range of powered speaker cabinets sold under the XXL and Skytec brands that looks identical to the JBL Eon series. Rear connections are not the same.

Yesterday I came across a Skytec (export only) active series - the RC12 and RC15. The cabinets look identical to RCF actives. Again rear connections are different.

None of these cabinets are being passed off as those they copy, but I wonder how they are viewed by the manufacturers of the original brands?

I would expect that they get away with it with very subtle changes to the mouldings, or maybe they use the cases under license.

I've often wondered about certain vehicles for example the Vauxhall Vivaro, Renault Trafic and Nissan Primestar (I think) are all identical.
Even more worrying is that you can get a Chrysler 300C and turn it into a Bentley.

Jim

I dont want to dig up this old story really but a few years ago, Terralec were sued by MAD lighting because they were selling Pearl River (Tornado?) Scanners with a plastic case that looked like the MADscans. MAD won and poor Terralec had to hand over to MAD the names and addresses of all customers who had bought these Pearl River units along with their remaining stock. Now I've seen both types and the PR units are only similar, not copies, of the MAD units, but the court deemed them sufficiently similar to infringe patents. Note that it was the UK importer, not Pearl River themselves who were sued.

This event happened before the UK was flooded with chinese imports as we are now. I wonder if today's market is so awash with 'tributes' that it's becoming a losing battle to challenge proprietory designs?

That's because of an agreement between the manufacturers.

The Citroen Dispatch, Peugeot Expert and Fiat Scudo are the results of similar collaboration.




In the mid 90's I remember a local dealer telling me that his Abstract rep had told him that they were concerned that a copy of one their units had been seen on the market. Apparently the Acme Scimitar was the culprit and coincidentally Terralec were (I think) the first UK retailer to have them, bringing them in via Beglec.

There was a program on TV some years back showing how all sorts of 'branded' goods were being bought from well known manufacturers in the West, shipped to China / India and then copied en-masse, reverse engineered and made cheaply and then flooded back onto the market either at a cheaper price or bearing a different brand identity. Its pretty routine hazard these days for manufacturers of popular goods, and very difficult to trace and take action against these factories manufacturing copied goods, especially as some countries don't consider it an illegal practice or worth enforcing it. Most manufacturers live in fear these days of their new products being copied within hours of release and then sold at a fraction of the cost of the genuine one.

Some OEM goods are genuine, in that 'black boxes' are designed and made by a factory overseas, and then sold on 'unbranded' to various distributors all over the world who then badge the item with their own identity, name and logo in order to make it appear that it is their own product - this practice is perfectly acceptable, but the first example isn't.

In some cases it is a good thing for the consumer, as the apperance of fake goods onto the market usually helps to control the price of the genuine goods in order to make them more attractive, and if it wasn't for the influence of cheap offshore manufacturing, we'd all still be paying £700 for a VCR / DVD Player

Any Bose 'copies' yet?

They tried but it wasn't quite up to standard

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbys...the-market.html

i cant get that link to work?