Benro, more IP theft?

[BernardLanguillier]

I was at the camera show in Yokohama today and came accross this:

http://english.benro.cn/LB.aspx

It looks like a perfect and shameless copy of the Really Right Stuff long kens support I gave been using for 2 years.

I feel they had already stolen Wimberley designs before, am I the only one to find this revolting?

Thoughts?

Cheers,
Bernard

[mediumcool]

I was at the camera show in Yokohama today and came accross this:

http://english.benro.cn/LB.aspx

It looks like a perfect and shameless copy of the Really Right Stuff long kens support I gave been using for 2 years.

I feel they had already stolen Wimberley designs before, am I the only one to find this revolting?

The concept of IP in China is in practice, well, rather recondite.

[alain]

I was at the camera show in Yokohama today and came accross this:

http://english.benro.cn/LB.aspx

It looks like a perfect and shameless copy of the Really Right Stuff long kens support I gave been using for 2 years.

I feel they had already stolen Wimberley designs before, am I the only one to find this revolting?

Thoughts?

Cheers,
Bernard

Based on the pictures, it's a simple design. I would not call it IP in the first place, I'm quite sure a lot of DIY people have made such things in the past.

[32BT]

Just some random remarks that come to mind for discussion's sake:

1. Do you know whether any of those other companies claimed IP in China?

2. What stops me from ordering that stuff in China and importing it for my personal needs?

3. Why is an L bracket even considered an intellectual achievement?

4. If we advocate "Free Market", doesn't that concept kind of exclude IP protection?

A country is obviously allowed to have its own ideas of domestic market and IP, but on the international level one might consider what the common reference is. That's true for both the developed countries as it is true for what used to be developing countries. Considering that China is larger than the US and EU combined, I think they would easily win a "democratic" vote in this matter.

But it's my understanding that China wants to become an active member of the WTO and one of the requirements is the adoption,  implementation, and not unimportantly the enforcement of western standards regarding IP. They do seem to be open to conforming to these requirements.

It's interesting to read China news sources because recently there have been many references regarding government use of unpaid copies of Windows OS. (I'm using "unpaid" as opposed to "illegal" deliberately). They want to actively change that to paid versions. In my personal interpretation this is in the news and done for 2 reasons:

The first is obviously to conform to WTO rules, but the second is the more important signal to the people of China that these are the new standards that the government is going to live by. Such a signal btw has far greater effect in China than in the west. Clearly, change at that scale isn't going to happen overnight.

Having said that: I do believe that we should also reconsider IP treatment in the west. It's obviously gone way beyond its intended purposes, and has become somewhat of an elitist right. It costs too much to acquire, but the cost of true protection has clearly become prohibitive to the common man. Not to mention the fact that one can be sued and taken out of business before one has been able to proof one's innocence. And don't get me started on current patent wars in corporate US, or the concept of patent trolls...

[Pingang]

IP concerns aside, they are doing greater good for public. The point is, does RRS applied patent for their design? We have seen the action of "copy" everywhere, and certainly, want to and capable of copying are 2 different things and China (and may be India soon) have both.  I am not promoting the IP violation, but there is little to do to prevent this.  But at least I live in China and I use RRS.  Benro is the common target, come to China to see how many versions of RRS being made in China, some better than Benro, and as good as RRS.

Pingang

[BJL]

4. If we advocate "Free Market", doesn't that concept kind of exclude IP protection?

Only in the same way that by advocating a "free society" we exclude property rights and laws against theft because we should all be free to take anything we want. Basing an ethical argumenton worshipping a single adjective in simplistic extreme is not likely to give good answers to every case of conflicting wants and interests.

P. S. my slightly less radical idea on patents is that as much as possible, there should be a right to use if one pays licensing fees set on "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" terms, as already appllies to some patents relating to agreed industry standards. That would serve the stated purpose of a patent, to reward and thus encourage innovation, without relying on "mini-monopolies", and it could prevent the use of patents solely to prevent anyone from adopting a new, better approach that the the one a company is heavily invested in.

[32BT]

Only in the same way that by advocating a "free society" we exclude property rights and laws against theft because we should all be free to take anything we want. Basing an ethical argumenton worshipping a single adjective in simplistic extreme is not likely to give good answers to every case of conflicting wants and interests.

True, but understanding the simplistic extremes is sometimes useful in finding an optimal compromise.

"Free" as in "taking what you want without further thought" might be useful for hunter-gatherer paradigms, but I assume that at some point a society may have gained an inherent intelligence to know that simply taking without regard for the future will eventually lead to deprivation. This is both true for natural resources, as well as intellectual resources. China has grown on the basis of not incurring innovation costs, but once you deplete all copyable ideas, and fail to pay innovators for their efforts, the innovators vanish which in this case are also the customers…

Interestingly the west has an equal responsibility. For some reason we long for cheap products more than for quality products. Not that these two are mutually exclusive, but in most cases there is a disconnect.

P. S. my slightly less radical idea on patents is that as much as possible, there should be a right to use if one pays licensing fees set on "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" terms, as already appllies to some patents relating to agreed industry standards. That would serve the stated purpose of a patent, to reward and thus encourage innovation, without relying on "mini-monopolies", and it could prevent the use of patents solely to prevent anyone from adopting a new, better approach that the the one a company is heavily invested in.

Yes, I like that idea as well. Possibly even publishing the licensing fees within the patent-application.

[Rob C]

The great fudge is going to be this: the arts such as drawing, painting, photography and possibly books are going to lose what protection from dayl¡ght robbery that they might already have; other arts such as music, computer sciences and films might already have the clout to cause governments to take their case seriously and enforce protection.

Today, there were images on the news of demonstrations in Poland against Internet copyright laws being enforced. Looking at the crowd and the age group, it seemed to me that few of them looked old enough to have personally produced anything yet with the burden/benefit of intellectual property rights attached! In essence, I think we are looking at a youth movement that has become conditioned by its parents in the belief that everything should be free, and available now. This reminds me of something I mentioned a while ago, where an old gentleman in a local bar here remarked that today, everyone has rights, but nobody has resonsibilities... However, reverting for a second to the Poles on the news: they were very good at jumping up and down on the spot.

Rob C

[32BT]

The great fudge is going to be this: the arts such as drawing, painting, photography and possibly books are going to lose what protection from dayl¡ght robbery that they might already have; other arts such as music, computer sciences and films might already have the clout to cause governments to take their case seriously and enforce protection.

...

but nobody has resonsibilities...

Well, it's interesting you should mention "responsibility".

The copyright debate currently results in this: governments seem to move the responsibility of judging what constitutes copyright breach away from the legal system into the hands of commercial organizations. And I hope stating it this way makes the error immediately obvious.

[Rhossydd]

I think we are looking at a youth movement that has become conditioned by its parents in the belief that everything should be free, and available now.

I don't think that's necessarily fair. There are enough 'grown ups' who should know better seem to think that anything on the internet is fair game, even here there's too little regard for IP eg last post of  http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=36819.0

Part of the problem is that IP rights simply aren't well understood or explained to people.

[MrSmith]

P. S. my slightly less radical idea on patents is that as much as possible, there should be a right to use if one pays licensing fees set on "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" terms, as already appllies to some patents relating to agreed industry standards. That would serve the stated purpose of a patent, to reward and thus encourage innovation, without relying on "mini-monopolies", and it could prevent the use of patents solely to prevent anyone from adopting a new, better approach that the the one a company is heavily invested in.

this is similar to what the professional imaging associations in the U.K. are fighting against. it's this kind of thinking that self serving self appointed 'collections agencies' wish to see implemented for their own interests and those of the big media companies. it's a kick in the nuts for professional photographers who are already on their knees.

http://stop43.org.uk/

these 'freetards' wouldn't like it if i walked into their house and took food from their child's mouths but that's essentially what they endorse.



 

[BJL]

MrSmith, you seem to have completely ignored the bit about paying licensing fees for the IP, or you are cynically assuming that the fees will be unreasonably low. Maybe that is the case with the proposed law that you are complaining about, but the IT industry including major patent holders have accepted FRAND patent licensing approach in some cases, so I would not reject it out of hand.

Technology IP is also a rather different case than works of art and reproducion rights. I am a lot more comfortable with a photographer having a "monopoly" over a photo, which competes with thousands of others, than with someone having a monopoly over a key technological innovation without which a whole product category might be held back in price and performance.

And certainly it does not help your argument to use innacurate insults like "freetards".

[MrSmith]

i haven't ignored the bit about license fee's, in the U.K. there were various proposed administrators of the proposed system and from what i understand the amounts ending up in the pocket of the creator would have been derisory. the bill failed due to effective lobbying but there was some alarming support from public funded organizations like the BBC who basically wanted content for free.

"Under these proposals, the creator or rights holder of the work in question would probably have no idea that it had been so licensed, no opportunity to approve or restrict the use to be made of it, and no chance to negotiate a fee for the use: this would all done by the collecting society."

a breech of the Bern convention and basic human rights.

[BJL]

i haven't ignored the bit about license fee's, in the U.K. there were various proposed administrators of the proposed system and from what i understand the amounts ending up in the pocket of the creator would have been derisory.

I can see "rights-holders" being squeezed in that case, where they are "little guys" like individual photographers. I expect it would be different when the people wanting to get paid are patent holders like Apple, Motorola+Google, Microsoft, Kodak and Samsung, who are currently the squabbling poster children for needing a new approach to patent licensing.

[Ellis Vener]

Back to the topic at hand, there is this long lens support made here in the USA: http://www.hejnarphoto.com/ebay/products/LLSB.html

The question is: its this a patentable design in the first place? Does the design predate Really Right Stuff's use of it, and if so has the original patent expired? And what about Really Right Stuff (and kirk Enterprises, Foba, Novoflex, Graf, PhotoClam, Markins, Sunway Foto, etc.) using Arca-Swiss' clamp and rail design? Did that violate Arca-Swiss' patents in the first place? I don't know.

[Gary Ferguson]

It looks like a perfect and shameless copy of the Really Right Stuff long kens support I gave been using for 2 years.

I feel they had already stolen Wimberley designs before, am I the only one to find this revolting?

Thoughts?

Didn't Really Right Stuff (and others) "take inspiration" from some Arca Swiss original thinking?

[BernardLanguillier]

Didn't Really Right Stuff (and others) "take inspiration" from some Arca Swiss original thinking?

You could probably argue that, except that by making it a standard RRS did in fact strengthen the position of Arca swiss.

The question of IP is key. I am of course against the recent attempts to over do it and risk killing freedom of speech, but the investment in a technology has to be valued and protected.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Schewe]

The question of IP is key.

Yep...and in the USA there are two kinds; copyright and patents...RRS doesn't, I think, qualify for copyright protection of their designs, their designs are not unique and original, just really well engineered...the question of patents is more complicated. You have to patent a process–I don't think RRS falls into a category of a process. If you can attain a patent for a process in the US, then you have to go out to other countries and try to achieve international patents. And that becomes increasingly more difficult.

Look, the best part of RRS (and Arca Swiss) is the quality of the machining...everything they make is very well machined. But that's no an IP thing.

[Ellis Vener]

You could probably argue that, except that by making it a standard RRS did in fact strengthen the position of Arca swiss.

The question of IP is key. I am of course against the recent attempts to over do it and risk killing freedom of speech, but the investment in a technology has to be valued and protected.

Cheers,
Bernard

I apologize for the long history lesson and digression that follows.

I believe Arca-Swiss, about the time it was taken over by the Vogt family,  designed this quick release system. It was designed to work directly with their large-format cameras. Arca-Swiss has been around for awhile and even had a hand in  designing (I think) and building the first Sinar view cameras.
 
Before there was even a Really Right Stuff company, there was Kirk Enterprises. Kirk was (at the time) an Arca-Swiss dealer. Really Right Stuff may have been a seller of Arca-Swiss tripod heads as well until they, like Kirk, started making their own. Kirk's first ballhead design was close enough a copy of the Arca-Swiss B1 head that Arca-Swiss was able to successfully stop Kirk from producing that head.

The B1 (And B2) Arca-Swiss heads with their elliptical ball shape  increases drag on the ball as the camera tilts away from the horizontal position. That is what earned Arca-Swiss their reputation and also brought a lot of photographers to their quick release system as well. But Arca-Swiss' plates weren't up to the quality of the clamp or the ball design and that opened a door for companies like Kirk and RRS.

But even before those two American companies started up, European companies - Graf and Foba stand out in my memory but maybe Novoflex and Cambo as well as one or two others -- were using the same  QR clamp and plate design Arca-Swiss was.

My point is that RRS didn't make it a standard. There were and still are other QR designs out there. What made Arca-Swiss' design a standard is the sheer logic and versatility of the system. We photographers made it a standard because it is simple and logical and rugged.

Arca-Swiss is a very small family owned company (so are Kirk and RRS for that matter.) Where Arca-Swiss has failed so far is that they apparently never tried to popularize the system where as companies like Kirk and RRS did.  I believe the success of the tripod side of Arca-Swiss' business came asa surprise to them back in the dawn of  the world wide web era in the mid-1990s. They also were a victim of their own success and the endless echo chamber that is the world wide web when a batch of bad callotes (sp?) (essentially these are the "brakes in the head that put tension on the ball) got past quality control and the resulting noise in the fledgling forums at the time damaged their reputation for a few years. That also opened the door a bit wider for Kirk and RRS. When RRS' original owner sold the company to Joe Johnson, Mr. Johnson really started to go all out in making the company much easier to deal with and to market it and deserves full marks for what he has done, but so does the Vogt family at Arca-Swiss.

[Ellis Vener]

Jeff,
RRS does have patents on some of their designs.