Fake Chinese bike parts

[klunkrider]

No idea what the legal position is but looking at the morals of this very niche part of the counterfeit industry*, I'd struggle to believe that any of the people that have bought the £37 Paul Comp Klampers off AliX were ever going to spend 6 times that on the genuine ones, and similarly, if you're the kind of person that has £250 to blow on a mechanical disc brake, you ain't seeing the fake ones on AliX and thinking "Oh yeah, I could be doing with saving myself £200+ on these".

I also don't believe that anyone sees Paul Klampers at £37 and thinks they're getting a bargain on real Paul Comp stuff. The price gap between fake and genuine for the Ingrid mech looks to be even larger, £70 v £700.

You could argue there might be some affect on resale value where a buyer that might have the budget for some of this stuff on the used market would chose to buy a new, fake item and that could have an indirect effect on sales of the genuine ones but that seems pretty tenuous.

*What I mean by that is that we are looking at these high end, high price parts being faked and sold for fractions of the cost of the genuine ones. The issue of for instance fake shimano chains being passed off as genuine and sold at 75-95% of the cost of a genuine one is obviously quite different.

 

[bikeworkshop]

Developing and creating quality product in the UK, European or USA costs a lot of money, that the copyright holder needs to keep developing.
They also need to pay for product testing, quality control and public liability.

If the thief steals your neighbours bike and sells it for good money, he might well come back and look in your garage.

If the fakers can make sales at a low price, they are incentivised and financed to reach further up the market.


We had a complete amazon iirc bike brought in to set up, and the 6sp tourney indexing (usually brilliant) just didn't work.
On closer inspection, none of the parts had part numbers on them
Madison/ shimano very interested.

This was a £250 mtb the kind usually bought by people with limited knowledge of bicycles and quality.

 

[Battersby]

Developing and creating quality product in the UK, European or USA costs a lot of money, that the copyright holder needs to keep developing.
They also need to pay for product testing, quality control and public liability.

If the thief steals your neighbours bike and sells it for good money, he might well come back and look in your garage.

If the fakers can make sales at a low price, they are incentivised and financed to reach further up the market.


We had a complete amazon iirc bike brought in to set up, and the 6sp tourney indexing (usually brilliant) just didn't work.
On closer inspection, none of the parts had part numbers on them
Madison/ shimano very interested.

This was a £250 mtb the kind usually bought by people with limited knowledge of bicycles and quality.

You still haven't backed up any claims though. You also talk about quality control and testing. What about shimanos cranks? They had known issues for a decade before being "checked".

You also haven't addressed your racist remarks.

 

[Cloverleaf]

That is some very bold claims, I'm sure you can back this up?

IP infringement isn't theft, it doesn't deprive someone of their property, either intellectual or physical.

Also saying Chinese (as in a billion people) as being all the same is racist.

Not bold, they're fairly standard claims which have been backed by many, many investigations and reports over the years by numerous people and organisations worldwide.

As an example from: https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...goods-research/ipo-counterfeit-goods-research

• according to the United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, counterfeiting is now the second largest source of criminal income worldwide.
• there are proven links between the sale of counterfeit goods and the funding of terrorist operations and of prominent groups such as Isis, the IRA, Al Qaïda etc. For example, police believe the perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo attacks sold counterfeit Nike trainers in order to fund the weapons they used.
• according to police, this year has seen an increase in incidents of counterfeiting operations in the UK that are linked to organised criminal groups, human trafficking, child sexual exploitation and prostitution.

Now, if you think that cycling components are somehow different to that, and that those who copy cycling parts compared to any other fakery worldwide are somehow more altruistic and less criminally minded then you are, sadly, mistaken.

My comment was in no way racist so don't try to undermine my statement by saying as such. In Chinese manufacturing there's very little value given to the ownership of intellectual property or design rights (and I have seen this first hand with my own work in several situations), and you only have to look at a multitude of products to see what is essentially the same product copied and sold with a different badge on it. It's not that they are trying to counterfeit as a criminal act, more that they just don't see the issue with manufacturing something using reverse engineering or copying of the original part. Many factories will freely rip components off and pass them to unwitting consumers as genuine, or simply pass off a lookalike to consumers who do know and just want the label - the former can obviously be incredibly dangerous if a component is bought with the expectation that it's been made from the same high quality materials as the original, with the same QC and post-treatment and is then used based on that expectation. Some Chinese manufacturing is superb, and really cutting edge, but that's not generally how the counterfeit stuff is produced - there's also a difference in selling seconds out the back door (albeit even these can often be made with substandard materials), and actively copying a design with no connection to the original designer. Now, my point was that the factories producing this stuff in China are less likely to be the actual actors involved in organised crime, but they are complicit in it by producing the goods that the criminal agents then use. If you buy directly through aliexpress so it comes straight from the factory then it'slesslikely to be funding things like terrorism, but not impossible.

Also, I think you will do well to understand how intellectual property works. It's one thing reproducing a part that is long since NLA and from a company which no longer exists, vs actively ripping off something that is still on active sale. After all, if it really didn't matter that the part wasn't copying something directly, why would you want to copy the logo in such a way that it was either identical, or mimicked the original? Of course you are doing that to piggyback off the reputation/image/brand that has been cultivated by another company or person.

From: https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...esses/ip-crime-and-enforcement-for-businesses

• IP rights are infringed when a product, creation or invention protected by IP laws are exploited, copied or otherwise used without the permission or consent of the person who owns those rights or their representative.
• It can range from using technology protected by a patent to selling counterfeit medicines/software, copying a film and making it available online to selling counterfeit goods including clothing, makeup, and DVDs. All these acts will constitute a civil infringement. However, in the case of trade marks, designs and copyright the act may also constitute a criminal offence if it’s conducted in the course of a business.

 

[Battersby]

Not bold, they're fairly standard claims which have been backed by many, many investigations and reports over the years by numerous people and organisations worldwide.

As an example from: https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...goods-research/ipo-counterfeit-goods-research

• according to the United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, counterfeiting is now the second largest source of criminal income worldwide.
• there are proven links between the sale of counterfeit goods and the funding of terrorist operations and of prominent groups such as Isis, the IRA, Al Qaïda etc. For example, police believe the perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo attacks sold counterfeit Nike trainers in order to fund the weapons they used.
• according to police, this year has seen an increase in incidents of counterfeiting operations in the UK that are linked to organised criminal groups, human trafficking, child sexual exploitation and prostitution.

Now, if you think that cycling components are somehow different to that, and that those who copy cycling parts compared to any other fakery worldwide are somehow more altruistic and less criminally minded then you are, sadly, mistaken.

My comment was in no way racist so don't try to undermine my statement by saying as such. In Chinese manufacturing there's very little value given to the ownership of intellectual property or design rights (and I have seen this first hand with my own work in several situations), and you only have to look at a multitude of products to see what is essentially the same product copied and sold with a different badge on it. It's not that they are trying to counterfeit as a criminal act, more that they just don't see the issue with manufacturing something using reverse engineering or copying of the original part. Many factories will freely rip components off and pass them to unwitting consumers as genuine, or simply pass off a lookalike to consumers who do know and just want the label - the former can obviously be incredibly dangerous if a component is bought with the expectation that it's been made from the same high quality materials as the original, with the same QC and post-treatment and is then used based on that expectation. Some Chinese manufacturing is superb, and really cutting edge, but that's not generally how the counterfeit stuff is produced - there's also a difference in selling seconds out the back door (albeit even these can often be made with substandard materials), and actively copying a design with no connection to the original designer. Now, my point was that the factories producing this stuff in China are less likely to be the actual actors involved in organised crime, but they are complicit in it by producing the goods that the criminal agents then use. If you buy directly through aliexpress so it comes straight from the factory then it'slesslikely to be funding things like terrorism, but not impossible.

Also, I think you will do well to understand how intellectual property works. It's one thing reproducing a part that is long since NLA and from a company which no longer exists, vs actively ripping off something that is still on active sale. After all, if it really didn't matter that the part wasn't copying something directly, why would you want to copy the logo in such a way that it was either identical, or mimicked the original? Of course you are doing that to piggyback off the reputation/image/brand that has been cultivated by another company or person.

From: https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...esses/ip-crime-and-enforcement-for-businesses

• IP rights are infringed when a product, creation or invention protected by IP laws are exploited, copied or otherwise used without the permission or consent of the person who owns those rights or their representative.
• It can range from using technology protected by a patent to selling counterfeit medicines/software, copying a film and making it available online to selling counterfeit goods including clothing, makeup, and DVDs. All these acts will constitute a civil infringement. However, in the case of trade marks, designs and copyright the act may also constitute a criminal offence if it’s conducted in the course of a business.

I understand IP law but saying "the Chinese" is racist.

Also ISIS was founded from a branch of Al Qaida that was funded by the west to fight communism. The hypocrisy for the west to argue that other people making counterfeit products enables terrorism is almost laughable.

You could argue the banking sector finances terrorism, food trade uses child labour and trafficking? Its interesting that the west chooses to try and protect capital investment over almost everything.

 

[Vesatoro]

Isn't there a seller here selling what is effectively fake rare mtb parts- Ringle, Syncros etc, but German made.
At expensive prices i might add. Not saying they arent worth it, but im not sure theres that great a difference between fake German parts, and fake Chinese parts

Yes, and there is also a fairly large amount of repro parts made in France. A major hypocrisy, I'd say.

 

[d8mok]

Reproduction sounds far fancier than fake though doesn’t it …..

Here’s a question then …..

Would this extend to decals? As we all know it’s near impossible to get genuine retro bike decals so we use likely a person who reproduces them and are all happy mostly with them. But I’ve never heard them referred to as fake.

 

[bikeworkshop]

There a difference in value (and often appearance) between a restored item and one in original as new condition.
You get "over- restored" too.

But if you put the decals on something that wasn't correct...

Also we should consider the purpose of the purchaser.

If you bought a fake rolex or Paul's levers or whatever, so you could "get the look", that seems a little different to if you were trying to profit by "passing them off" to the unwary in a sale.

It's not simple.
But it's probably also not at the top of the heirarchy of evil things that occur in the world.

Greed and self-interest take many forms. Some are worse than others - and a lot depends on your perspective.

 

[CassidyAce]

I understand IP law but saying "the Chinese" is racist.

Also ISIS was founded from a branch of Al Qaida that was funded by the west to fight communism. The hypocrisy for the west to argue that other people making counterfeit products enables terrorism is almost laughable.

You could argue the banking sector finances terrorism, food trade uses child labour and trafficking? Its interesting that the west chooses to try and protect capital investment over almost everything.

I don't think it's racist to say that a lot of fake bike parts come from China. After all, there's no suggestion that this is somehow a byproduct of a Chinese 'race', nor is there a suggestion that all Chinese are engaged in producing fakes. Many have said that London is the money laundering capital of the world without there being any suggestion that most Londoners or Brits are involved or dodgy. Surely, the same applies here.

However, although I'm not convinced that the accusation of racism is justified in this particular case, I have long thought that there are sometimes racist overtones in the way American and British manufacture is often valorised in cycling circles while 'far eastern' is used to imply inferior. You're not wrong that the West can be hypocritical either.

However, I'm not picking up on any racism or hypocrisy from the guys in this debate.

 

[al-onestare]

IP infringement isn't theft, it doesn't deprive someone of their property, either intellectual or physical.

That's just not correct. Infringement in these terms means theft.