Copies of GripSport products.
- Thread starter Grip
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Pebble
Likes Bikes and Dirt
It is rather unfortunate that people will always try to copy successful products in some way, shape or form.
I don't know much about the legal stuff, I'm sure you do, and if it was me in your case I would certainly be looking into it. I would hope to scare them off . . . well either that or they can come up with their own legal idea which may or may not stand up as legitimate competition!
Oh yeah I'm still looking forward to buying some crank holders to bolt to my ute at some stage . .. I have a house and a bike to sell first though
I don't know much about the legal stuff, I'm sure you do, and if it was me in your case I would certainly be looking into it. I would hope to scare them off . . . well either that or they can come up with their own legal idea which may or may not stand up as legitimate competition!
Oh yeah I'm still looking forward to buying some crank holders to bolt to my ute at some stage . .. I have a house and a bike to sell first though
sawtell
The Great White Rooks Hunter
I happen to know of some one, who has been replicating the racks, and selling them off..
not on a large scale that im aware off, but just around to a few mates.
they are slightly different, ... and by that i mean, they FLEX like they are made out of butter, you stand on the end, and it pretty much drags on the ground!
personaly id prefer an orignal, which i will buy when i get a new car, but atm, a wagon does the job of a bike holder!.
not on a large scale that im aware off, but just around to a few mates.
they are slightly different, ... and by that i mean, they FLEX like they are made out of butter, you stand on the end, and it pretty much drags on the ground!
personaly id prefer an orignal, which i will buy when i get a new car, but atm, a wagon does the job of a bike holder!.
Pebble
Likes Bikes and Dirt
Yes I was that close to buying an Original when we had the Subaru, but I brought a DH frame instead, and then sold the car for a ute.
If I can somehow sell the ute, and get my dream car (Mini) I'd buy a Grip rack in a nanosecond!
I thought I saw a copy being sold here on Farkin once, but I think it was just a person selling one they had made for themselves, I don't remember the price being hugely cheaper either though and you'd have to wonder why people would buy the copy over the genuine article.
for a ute.If I can somehow sell the ute, and get my dream car (Mini
) I'd buy a Grip rack in a nanosecond!I thought I saw a copy being sold here on Farkin once, but I think it was just a person selling one they had made for themselves, I don't remember the price being hugely cheaper either though and you'd have to wonder why people would buy the copy over the genuine article.
Yes people i have been reading all the post's as they come about and just to clarify things once again for you John, i do understand patents and all what you are having a rant about. This thread began because you are not happy about someone copying your design that you claim was "designed from the ground up". Then you proceed to say that the copying of said designs to a point of manufacture and sale is not right. So for a person to stand at one end of the scale and complain when an infringement on their product is made, yet at the other end of the scale copy other people's designs is rather hypocritical. Secondly this places your credibility somewhat in jeopardy:
“I sat down and made our very first Shock Bushing tool over 10 years ago, out of brass, and from hex material I had laying about under the lathe. I came up with the idea and the measurements myself and then started manufacturing and selling them some years later after seeing the CTS tool (which made me realise that there was a market for them).”
http://www.rotorburn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24454
Date 09/01/2005
J5ive:
I'm getting one of these from CTS....and a bunch of bushings from,
http://www.ctsmtb.com/BushingTool.cfm
As no one I've found seems to sell these in Australia. If anyones keen on chucking one on the order, let me know. We could do a group buy sorta thingo. Or if you know where I can buy one here I'd also like to know that!
Grip:
I'm seriously NOT having a go at anyone here, but what's the point of this tool? I've been taking these "spacers" (they're hardly "bushes") out of shocks for a fair while and it's never occured to me that there should even BE a tool for it.
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.
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Makes me wonder what I've been doing wrong
J5ive:
hehe Grip. Just one for me. But I can't see how it would hurt to make a couple and advertise it
Grip:
Give me a week and I'll whip one up for you :wink:
Grip:
Hope I didn't give anyone the wrong impression when I said I'd "whip one up"... I didn't mean for free but I will make a couple to try them out and the price will be $35 posted anywhere in OZ. You'll need to let me know BEFORE I fire up the lathe.
Just because you have copied an idea and the original manufacture or holder of the patent hasn’t yet been made aware of some bloke in a back shed replicating their product 100% doesn’t mean that you aren’t breaching any registered patents.
So for all you people who are supporting John, maybe you should go and have a look at all the threads and see what is being said. As for studying point missing 101, I failed that subject at uni and don’t see the need to repeat it.
I couldn’t care less if you take legal proceedings against the people copying “your” deign as I have nothing to do with them and don’t even know who they are. Maybe ill find out who it is and ill send them an email notifying them of the potential patent’s that you might be infringing on….or maybe ill just send CTS and the other honest people you have copied an email notifying them.
At the end of the day, technically speaking if they are copying your design of this particular concept, that you claim you have a patent on, and then yes you would be able to legally proceed against them. But you would know that they would simply be able to make changes to the design in order for it to not infringe on your patent, which thanks to this thread, if they have seen it, I am sure they are in the process of doing.
“I sat down and made our very first Shock Bushing tool over 10 years ago, out of brass, and from hex material I had laying about under the lathe. I came up with the idea and the measurements myself and then started manufacturing and selling them some years later after seeing the CTS tool (which made me realise that there was a market for them).”
http://www.rotorburn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24454
Date 09/01/2005
J5ive:
I'm getting one of these from CTS....and a bunch of bushings from,
http://www.ctsmtb.com/BushingTool.cfm
As no one I've found seems to sell these in Australia. If anyones keen on chucking one on the order, let me know. We could do a group buy sorta thingo. Or if you know where I can buy one here I'd also like to know that!
Grip:
I'm seriously NOT having a go at anyone here, but what's the point of this tool? I've been taking these "spacers" (they're hardly "bushes") out of shocks for a fair while and it's never occured to me that there should even BE a tool for it.
.
.
.
Makes me wonder what I've been doing wrong
J5ive:
hehe Grip. Just one for me. But I can't see how it would hurt to make a couple and advertise it
Grip:
Give me a week and I'll whip one up for you :wink:
Grip:
Hope I didn't give anyone the wrong impression when I said I'd "whip one up"... I didn't mean for free but I will make a couple to try them out and the price will be $35 posted anywhere in OZ. You'll need to let me know BEFORE I fire up the lathe.
Just because you have copied an idea and the original manufacture or holder of the patent hasn’t yet been made aware of some bloke in a back shed replicating their product 100% doesn’t mean that you aren’t breaching any registered patents.
So for all you people who are supporting John, maybe you should go and have a look at all the threads and see what is being said. As for studying point missing 101, I failed that subject at uni and don’t see the need to repeat it.
I couldn’t care less if you take legal proceedings against the people copying “your” deign as I have nothing to do with them and don’t even know who they are. Maybe ill find out who it is and ill send them an email notifying them of the potential patent’s that you might be infringing on….or maybe ill just send CTS and the other honest people you have copied an email notifying them.
At the end of the day, technically speaking if they are copying your design of this particular concept, that you claim you have a patent on, and then yes you would be able to legally proceed against them. But you would know that they would simply be able to make changes to the design in order for it to not infringe on your patent, which thanks to this thread, if they have seen it, I am sure they are in the process of doing.
And once again you seem to ignore the fact that Grip is not talking about patents.
THis is getting silly, I don't even know why you want to have a go at Grip when all he was trying to do, as a paid sponsor of this site, was support his product, which I can say from experience is by far the best bike rack I have used.
Duff_Man, you seem to be coming across the fool in this thread, so I'll leave you to that.
Cedel
Likes Bikes and Dirt
johnny, isn't it flooding in China at the moment?
Well just replace "patent" with "registered design"....that isn’t really the main point..my point is that Grip has copied other people, other people are now copying grip and subsequently Grip is unhappy.... a bit hypocritical don’t you think…..
a patent and a registered design are not all that different from one another...it is still a form of protection of the function of a design or the form in which the design takes....yes different but still very similar...
a patent and a registered design are not all that different from one another...it is still a form of protection of the function of a design or the form in which the design takes....yes different but still very similar...
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notso
Likes Dirt
..... errrr, you're still coming off looking pretty muddy here; And you're on your way to making lots of friends.
You obviously don't see the issue here.
John has a particular design that he's been selling to, whilst also supporting the DH community.
'Joe Peanut' here decides he wants to copy this design which has earned the respect of customers through years of use and support (both from a product and race perspective).... and through copying this design, he makes coin on the back of someone else's hard work.
Yes this happens all the time in the big wide world..... but this is a small community..... and mud sticks
toodles
Wheel size expert
Whoa Duff Man - my post was meant to remind you that Grip has gone out of his way to provide gear that suits what riders want. He's actually taken suggestions on board from members of this forum regarding the development and reincarnations of his products to arrive at the current designs.
A bushing tool is a bad example as there is practically no way to offer any significant improvement or functionality to what is already available. But Grips racks and workstands are the result of trial and error and feedback from customers and members of this site. What I'm sure grip resents is that someone has taken the final product and duplicated that, while presenting it as being comparable in quality to his own stuff.
When Clone A snaps and drags someones bike 300 metres down the road, it can reflect badly on the design rather than the manufacturer.
Either way, I look forward to seeing more nifty gadgets on offer from Grip. He has a knack for seeing opportunities and improvements for tools and gear in our sport.
A bushing tool is a bad example as there is practically no way to offer any significant improvement or functionality to what is already available. But Grips racks and workstands are the result of trial and error and feedback from customers and members of this site. What I'm sure grip resents is that someone has taken the final product and duplicated that, while presenting it as being comparable in quality to his own stuff.
When Clone A snaps and drags someones bike 300 metres down the road, it can reflect badly on the design rather than the manufacturer.
Either way, I look forward to seeing more nifty gadgets on offer from Grip. He has a knack for seeing opportunities and improvements for tools and gear in our sport.
Grip
Yeah, yeah... blah, blah.
The ridiculous thing here is that I know who DuffMan is... knew him as a kid when he hung around at VicMTB and know that he is a student working part time at Groupe Sportif... and it never occurred to me that he held such deep seated resentment towards GripSport. Go figure
Jesus H Christ, Duff. You don't even know the difference between Patents and Registered Designs and so now you're changing your position to make it an argument about my hypocrisy. And you seem to be trying tell people that we generally copy our designs (obviously meaning in multiple instances). Maybe next you'd like to discuss Australia's rather stringent laws on libel and slander. I don't claim to be an expert on them personally, but our lawyer is.
So let me clarify your one and only example of my so-called hypocrisy… the bushing tool.
I designed and made one for personal use over 10 years ago… I saw this thread on Farkin http://www.rotorburn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24454… At first I thought the poster was wanting a tool to remove shock "reducers" (and clearly said so after my mistake was pointed out to me by Rik)…. then I was re-directed to the CTS site and saw their tool… I realised it wasn't that dissimilar to a tool I'd made for myself over 5 years earlier… I realised there was probably a market for such a jigger… I offered to whip one up for j5 and anyone else who wanted one... after it got such a good response I added it to our product list.
And the problem with this is where? Is it because they look the same? Well the reality is that both our tool and the one by CTS look pretty much the same as a number of light, hand screw presses (because that's all it is) that I've made and seen made in the engineering and toolmaking industries over the last 35 years. Hex section is great because it gives you a hand-hold and can easily/quickly have a shifter applied if needed… the leading face has to get turned down to so as to fit up tight against the eyelet that's having the bearing/bush pushed out of it… the inside has to be turned out to allow the bearing/bush room to move out of the eyelet… you need dies of the correct size to push out the bearing/bush and still get through the eyelet… and you need a threaded "driver" to actually push those dies through.
No copying there, sunshine… as I said it's a common old hand-held screw press with dimensions arrived at in order to do it's very specific job. Just like ANY hand held screw press is made. In fact heres a couple of samples for you of NON-GripSport DU bushing tools. All of these work on exactly the same principal and are all pretty similar to ours.
And as a final word on this... have a look at this chain breaker. It's actually a hand-held screw press designed for a specific purpose and as such it looks pretty much like every other chain breaker on the market... for the very simple reason that it HAS to look like every other chain breaker becuase of it's function... just like our DU Bushing Tool HAS to look like every other DU bushing tool because of it's function.
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Jesus H Christ, Duff. You don't even know the difference between Patents and Registered Designs and so now you're changing your position to make it an argument about my hypocrisy. And you seem to be trying tell people that we generally copy our designs (obviously meaning in multiple instances). Maybe next you'd like to discuss Australia's rather stringent laws on libel and slander. I don't claim to be an expert on them personally, but our lawyer is.
So let me clarify your one and only example of my so-called hypocrisy… the bushing tool.
I designed and made one for personal use over 10 years ago… I saw this thread on Farkin http://www.rotorburn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24454… At first I thought the poster was wanting a tool to remove shock "reducers" (and clearly said so after my mistake was pointed out to me by Rik)…. then I was re-directed to the CTS site and saw their tool… I realised it wasn't that dissimilar to a tool I'd made for myself over 5 years earlier… I realised there was probably a market for such a jigger… I offered to whip one up for j5 and anyone else who wanted one... after it got such a good response I added it to our product list.
And the problem with this is where? Is it because they look the same? Well the reality is that both our tool and the one by CTS look pretty much the same as a number of light, hand screw presses (because that's all it is) that I've made and seen made in the engineering and toolmaking industries over the last 35 years. Hex section is great because it gives you a hand-hold and can easily/quickly have a shifter applied if needed… the leading face has to get turned down to so as to fit up tight against the eyelet that's having the bearing/bush pushed out of it… the inside has to be turned out to allow the bearing/bush room to move out of the eyelet… you need dies of the correct size to push out the bearing/bush and still get through the eyelet… and you need a threaded "driver" to actually push those dies through.
No copying there, sunshine… as I said it's a common old hand-held screw press with dimensions arrived at in order to do it's very specific job. Just like ANY hand held screw press is made. In fact heres a couple of samples for you of NON-GripSport DU bushing tools. All of these work on exactly the same principal and are all pretty similar to ours.
And as a final word on this... have a look at this chain breaker. It's actually a hand-held screw press designed for a specific purpose and as such it looks pretty much like every other chain breaker on the market... for the very simple reason that it HAS to look like every other chain breaker becuase of it's function... just like our DU Bushing Tool HAS to look like every other DU bushing tool because of it's function.
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just clarifying for notso, but maybe this is me missing the point again:
"....'Joe Peanut' here decides he wants to copy this design which has earned the respect of customers through years of use and support (both from a product and race perspective).... and through copying this design, he makes coin on the back of someone else's hard work..."
Grip didnt come up with the idea, so i dont know where you are going with the "...support (both from a product and race persepective)..." part. The original rack's were modeld off team mt beauty trailers. This idea was then passed onto GRIP by the guys at VICMTB. Grip has then proceeded to make them ever since.
Grip...how can you sit there and say that your not happy about someone copying your design? fair enough you know if they have replicated your design 100% without any changes at all, that's probs a little much, but it seems that you have done the same thing.
You say that you have registered designs on your racks, claiming that the people manufacturing these other racks are breaching this.
" You can register the design of your product if it has an industrial or commercial use, and has a visual appearance that is both new and distinctive. This includes the shape, configuration, pattern or ornamentation which, when applied to your product, gives it a unique appearance. A registered design does not protect how your product feels, what it is made of or how it works."
source: http://www.business.gov.au/Business.../Intellectual+property/Registered+designs.htm
So wouldn’t that mean that by the appearance of your DU bushing tool and your 20mm fork up, you are in breach of other potential registered designs that are in the market. My interpretation how a registered design works would then suggest that your products are. So by simply claiming that your tool must look the same in order to function in that way isn’t much of an argument to put forward, because the people manufacturing your racks could just sit there and say the same thing:
“well I had to have the crank slot this high so the bike would sit in the rack correctly and the spacing is due to clearance and blah blah blah blah……”
"....'Joe Peanut' here decides he wants to copy this design which has earned the respect of customers through years of use and support (both from a product and race perspective).... and through copying this design, he makes coin on the back of someone else's hard work..."
Grip didnt come up with the idea, so i dont know where you are going with the "...support (both from a product and race persepective)..." part. The original rack's were modeld off team mt beauty trailers. This idea was then passed onto GRIP by the guys at VICMTB. Grip has then proceeded to make them ever since.
Grip...how can you sit there and say that your not happy about someone copying your design? fair enough you know if they have replicated your design 100% without any changes at all, that's probs a little much, but it seems that you have done the same thing.
You say that you have registered designs on your racks, claiming that the people manufacturing these other racks are breaching this.
" You can register the design of your product if it has an industrial or commercial use, and has a visual appearance that is both new and distinctive. This includes the shape, configuration, pattern or ornamentation which, when applied to your product, gives it a unique appearance. A registered design does not protect how your product feels, what it is made of or how it works."
source: http://www.business.gov.au/Business.../Intellectual+property/Registered+designs.htm
So wouldn’t that mean that by the appearance of your DU bushing tool and your 20mm fork up, you are in breach of other potential registered designs that are in the market. My interpretation how a registered design works would then suggest that your products are. So by simply claiming that your tool must look the same in order to function in that way isn’t much of an argument to put forward, because the people manufacturing your racks could just sit there and say the same thing:
“well I had to have the crank slot this high so the bike would sit in the rack correctly and the spacing is due to clearance and blah blah blah blah……”
Grip
Yeah, yeah... blah, blah.
Yes, it is.
What is that old saying about arguing on the internet being like competing at the Special Olympics? Oh dear God
. Are you truly missing the point or has that sand just worked its way so far up your giny that you simply can't back out of this arguement now and are committed to just scratching away at it?The difference is quite simple... we haven't infringed on anyone's product protection here in Australia. People copying our products ARE infringing on ours. Is that really so hard to understand?
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scblack
Leucocholic
And I quote you once again: "....potential registered designs...."
So you have now done your first bit of research into this topic, having had a serve at Grip for a couple of days now. Yet all you can come up with is "potential" registered design violations. Fuck me kid. If there is not a registered design, there CANNOT be any breach.
Your interpretations are shown by several people here to be the silly rantings of a pre-pubescent moron.
Your interpretation - hahahahahahahahaha.
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scblack...read a little harder and you will realise that "joe penut" is a quote from another post...along with the rest of that paragraph...
plain and simple john you are copying people's designs so stop having a cry about people copying yours, which we have already established arnt yours anyway.....
plain and simple john you are copying people's designs so stop having a cry about people copying yours, which we have already established arnt yours anyway.....
notso
Likes Dirt
I'm astounded that after everything discussed here you're still claiming that the design of the tow bar mounted DH carrier is not Grip's design.
Even though he has registered designs for them.
Please.... explain it to me again so I understand this
Tomas
my mum says im cool
Grip, your rack isnt 'original' in its use of crank holders by your own admission. That's fine, it's not a patented, no issue there. I guess the problem is how similar these two racks are. If the racks are for all intents and purposes IDENTICAL and they are selling them commercially, then commence legal action. Thats why you paid to have your design registered in the first place. This isnt really a topic for 'discussion' (which you made it when you bit at Duff-Man's comment. I would have locked the thread.
And Duff_man, for what it's worth, 'registered design' and patent are not similar. They are not the same. They are not interchangable words. They are entirely different concepts. The fact that the rack got design registration in the first place meant that there was nothing similar/being done/registered in Australia.
And Duff_man, for what it's worth, 'registered design' and patent are not similar. They are not the same. They are not interchangable words. They are entirely different concepts. The fact that the rack got design registration in the first place meant that there was nothing similar/being done/registered in Australia.
scblack
Leucocholic
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