5 hours ago, Craig Sawyers said:

Yes - cloning high ticket, high volume items is big business in China.

Cloning anything and everything that can potentially turn a profit is big business there, and sometimes all they need is the idea to clone almost instantly.  

https://qz.com/771727/chinas-factories-in-shenzhen-can-copy-products-at-breakneck-speed-and-its-time-for-the-rest-of-the-world-to-get-over-it/

 

Good heavens.

I don’t think any patents will hold it meaning in China at all.  There are counterfeit brands (similar quality or cheap and ripoff quality) both.  There are economy police forces that would go inspect and seize these counterfeit goods if your business is being sued for inspection.  However, most of the time, these guys are bribed away and turning their eyes.  The big guys in government will not care enough.  Unless it is something that could stir a huge conflict against other countries such as military technologies and so on....I think even war planes and some are simply copy cat from the super power countries.

Here in the US, we are very strict and regulated on these issues, but many other countries beside China, they do appreciate (counterfeit goods) and will pay for it at cheaper price.  However, there are some of these funky business as of late, had been infecting Amazon by a lot.  Soon, Amazon will face a challenge.

A Smartphone company XiaoMi is basically a copy cat of Apple IPhone, the founder is billionaire and the company is healthy+strong over there.  Then we have Huawaii which does similar things but on a much lesser scale and can export into the US...etc...etc..you get the idea.  Taobao and Aliexpress is basically a copycat of Amazon but based off of counterfeit goods to the rest of the world and Chinese labor forces.  Jack Ma is also made into a billionaire by...”copy cat”....there is no boundaries.

Just visit China and stroll around their markets, you will see huge differences in materials goods, patented and copy rights stuff, which hold no meaning over there.

 

one of the latest example of counterfeit goods is those Hollywood big hit movies.  They got released 1 week in China before the US.  Because in the past, the lesson learned is that the Americans rather enjoy new movies in theater, and they respect copy rights, together with punishments if infringement happened.  However, when shown in the US first, the Chinese somehow grab the copy as soon as possible, and Official (or so they branded it) DVD/Blu-ray will be filling the street in China before the movies even hit theaters, which results in a huge losses.

Edited April 3, 20188 yr by Whitigir

19 minutes ago, Whitigir said:

 Then we have Huawaii

It must be a counterfeit Hawaii from China. Huawei. 

While working for Cisco in the late 90's or early 00's, Huawei came out with a competing router that looked just like the Cisco router, had exactly the same command interface, same features, etc.  The funniest thing was that the documentation was, with the exception of "Cisco Systems" being replaced by "Huawei" was word to word exactly the same.  This included copying the typos.

^ That (interface) was because they also copied the Cisco IOS (including comments and bugs).

When I worked for Tellabs, during an optical tradeshow, we caught two of their engineers attempting to disassemble and photograph a piece of our equipment on the show floor after hours.

51 minutes ago, guzziguy said:

This included copying the typos.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street

 

6 minutes ago, dsavitsk said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street

 

Could be.  But it's probably not necessary when somebody copies your feature set, interface and documentation word for word.

Last two Omegas to sell on Yahoo Auction JP both within the last month sold for over US$11,000--

An SR Omega, Stax SRM T2 both boxed listed for 8000usd on a Japanese audio sold for that amount back in Feb.

Edited April 6, 20188 yr by DefQon

About a year ago, I think, they seemed to be going for around US$5-6K

Not for both an Omega and T2.

 

Sorry typo SRM T2, not T1.

The T2 on Yahoo JP the other day sold for nearly US$22K

Holy cow.  It fetches that far ?

Edited April 7, 20188 yr by Whitigir

Crazy collectors be crazy... 

Its just a couple of the same guys trying to jack up the market, like wiktor. Not collectors, just flippers.

You'd have to flip it pretty high if you're paying US$11K/22K for the phones & driver

I would respond but dont want to give any ideas to wannabe copycats.

They might be playing the long game or just collectors who have no idea what a fucking basketcase the original T2 is.  I am amazed that people are willing to drop this amount of money on an auction, for gear that nobody will service. 

Sort of along the lines of the last portion of your post Birgir, I was pretty horrified reading this thread...

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/tubes-valves/320948-repairing-hi-preamplifier.html

Just read that thread and what a clusterfuck!!!  So Zanden uses the cheapest PCB's possible in a 17k$ product and instead of making a new one they just bodge the issues?  Shit... 

At least there is a RK50 in there...

Flippers like wkitor will never have enough money to win such an auction facing Chinese collectors like the one this time who have bought the two omega and the t2 all by himself.

He said he would like to have a comparison on omegas from two era (early and late version perhapes) on a t2.

So you know exactly how much money wiktor and this guy has now? Something tells me they don't share an accountant.

It is highly doubtful a real collector would pay some of the highest prices anyone has ever seen for these items, back to back, and then brag to everyone about how much he spent on them. We'll see what happens in the near future.  

4 hours ago, bwck2000 said:

Flippers like wkitor will never have enough money to win such an auction facing Chinese collectors like the one this time who have bought the two omega and the t2 all by himself.

He said he would like to have a comparison on omegas from two era (early and late version perhapes) on a t2.

How would you know wiktor doesn’t have enough money to win such auctions? He’s been flipping many HE90/HEV90’s, Stax Omega/T2’s and other stuff for a very very long time even before he was a registered user on headfi. He is the only person I know who has owned more than 6 sets of HE90 and HEV90’s and many pairs of Stax Omegas etc. The collectors from Asia have nothing on him in comparison is what I’d say.

But those Chinese collectors could also have a lot more funds.  Yes, Wiktor have been flipping for a very long time.