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Old 12-11-2014, 01:07 PM   #7
KSagal
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Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Pelham, NH, USA.
Posts: 10,356
5 yr Member HT/PT Owner SegwayFest Attendee
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gbrandwood View Post
I'm not sure which unicycle came out first. It's hard to tell. There are quite a few models. I had an Airwheel for a while. The company in the UK selling it is just a distributor selling the stuff from China. It's the people in China who are doing the copying - and in China, perhaps the patent laws are not so strong. But in the UK, US patents should be observed - so for Airwheel to sell such an obvious copy should be nipped in the bud, IMHO.

Whether or not the original inventor of the electric unicycle took out patents, I do not know. Then we have the Ryno, a 1 wheel unicycle/motorcycle. Not sure if that is too far from the Airwheel (fundamentally) to be considered to be infringing.
I am having trouble following your logic here. If the intellectual property of the solo wheel was that it was the first electric unicycle that we saw marketed, and then airwheel, from China, copied it, and then sold it thru that distributor you bought from...

And the intellectual property of the segway was the first two wheel non tandem device that we saw marketed, and the then this company (robin, for argument's sake), from China, copied it, and then sold it thru that same distributor you bought from...

Why would it be a China issue for the clone solo wheel, and not a China issue for the clone segway?

It seems you bought the clone solo wheel for the same reason that people buy clone segways. Much of the cost of a device is in development, and sale price reflects that. Therefore the copy, with out all that development costs, can sell for much less. Add to that the fact that the original device is already out and has comments about it, like color and features, the copy can be made much cheaper, but also be 'new and improved'.

This is not a new thing. I have always thought that the Japanese car industry was like that. Their early ones used US steel, melted down from old chevys and fords, and the early model japanese cars sold in the US were cheaper in all ways. They were smaller, slower, less safe, and less comfortable. But over the years, they developed into being superior. The copy eventually surpassed the original.

The Koreans have made a similar leap. Theirs was significantly faster, and the evolution of Korean cars in the US from cheap copy to true competitor happened in years instead of decades.

Smaller devices like the segway and solowheel will have that cycle move much, much faster.

I do not see anything new here. I see what has existed several times in my lifetime and experience. The only new here is the names, not the concepts. At least, that is how I see it.
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