Tony

There is a reason why Champion price $4700 for this wing....

-High quality materials
-design (by experts with many years of experience in a very expensive facility, no in a garage)
-development (Air tunnel, days in the track, etc)

I hope i never read you complaining about the wing...

"Please don't take it personal but I don't believe anyone likes getting blanketed life lessons on a hobbyist forum website"

By the way i'm not giving you lessons.... i'm just explaining to you why their product is cheaper than the "competitors" this is what we do in the forums.... we talk about products, experiences with the cars, etc..... DON'T GET UPSET... you have no idea how many times i was "getting blanketed life lessons on a hobbyist forum website" how know you pain.... i remember when i bought the Fabspeed air intake.... i share it with everybody in the forum thinking that i was gonna get a lot of complements and people almost throw rocks at me lol

Good luck

 

The air tunnel testing is very impressive. I will probably buy some of their products in the future, thank you.

 

While I emphasize with any pangs a first rate outfit like Champion has upon seeing their presumably unpatented product copied, the real point about Tony’s purchase is something else. Is it legal, moral and ethical to make and buy less expensive copies of unpatented products? Yes, yes and yes. It’s one of the simplest principles of the free enterprise system. It happens millions of times every day in a capitalist economy.

 

Thank you for the advice, I am still fairly new to 6speed/forums and felt that I was being aggressed against. I take it I should stay away from Fabspeed products then?

 

I usually try not to insert myself in these debates, my position as a moderator may give the impression of bias. However, I will disclose that I am not a customer of either Precision or Champion.

I feel that companies should be rewarded for innovation - the reward is customer sales and customer loyalty. In a small market segment, it takes time, effort and money to develop a product that will turn a profit.

There are many aftermarket products available, most with limited science behind them. When a company goes through the effort of developing a product that works well and has science to confirm effectiveness, they deserve my loyalty as a customer.

Another member posted that it is legal, moral, and ethical to make copies of an unpatented product. Legal? Sure. But I guess I have a different ethical foundation in believing that cheating is cheating...copying a product without permission is cheating. While you can get away with it, it doesn't make it right.

I have no opinion on how others choose to spend their money. It does, however, help guide me in how to spend mine.

 

Legal, maybe. Ethical and moral to make and buy copies....I disagree.

Those who know our company well know that we spend an incredible amount of time and money on the research and development that goes into all of our products (not only our Werks1 carbon parts). We invest that much into the products because we expect a certain return on that investment. When someone like Precision Porsche simply copies our parts, we lose customers, we lose revenue, but most importantly we lose the desire and ability to develop new products in the future. If you can't see how that's morally and ethically wrong....well, I'm not sure how I can convince you otherwise.

And for the record, it's not just Precision Porsche who has copied our parts, and it's not only our parts that they've copied. TechArt, another company who thoroughly R&D's all of their aero products, is also quite commonly copied by Precision Porsche and others. What will happen when TechArt no longer designs and makes their beautiful aero kits? Who will they copy then? Originality will be gone from the aftermarket, and you (the customers) will be left with nothing but bad copies of dated products. Sound like a promising future?

 

Whoa. Watch your back when you start down the slippery slope of saying copying unpatented commercial products is not moral or ethical. Look out your office window at every man made object outside your property. You want to bet how many of the stop lights, telephone poles, neon signs, air conditioning units, step ladders, door *****, window flashings, etc etc that you can see were not made by the company that came up with the idea? Sitting in your kitchen, bathroom, library shelves, sports closet, liquor cabinet are examples you’ve bought in just the last month. Were you immoral and unethical when you bought that bottle of generic acetaminophen tablets? Was the company that made but didn’t invent it immoral? Unethical? If you think so, you’ve turned mainstream ethics on its head. If not, the example of Tony’s purchase is safely in the middle of commercial practices society deems ethically acceptable. The thinking in the board rooms and executive suites of the most sophisticated companies when they invest in development of products that will have no patent/IP production assumes competitor copying and a tough competitive environment. They calculate cost benefit strategies to determine what copying may do to their return and whether it’s worth the expenditure of resources. This is a built in way of life in the competitive American business environment, permitted by our laws that themselves are built on moral and ethical value judgments. Commercial imitation of unpatented products is so common that it is the norm. You have a tough time arguing that the norm in this country is immoral and unethical. The truth is that although it’s the same word, copying in an unpatented commercial context does not have an equivalent moral or ethical meaning to someone copying your answers on a calculus test.

 

Here's where I disagree with you. We didn't come up with the idea of a rear wing for the 997TT. We came up with our wing for the 997TT.

Your comments above are using the words imitation and copying in the same context...and they have different meanings. Imitation would just imply that someone saw our idea for a wing and decided to come out with their own wing. Copying means someone took our wing and simply copied is 1:1.

 

There is a difference between copying a concept...and making a exact physical facsimile by purchasing a competitor's product, making an exact replica of it using the competitor's original as a mould, then selling it as your own.

 

Let me add something to this.

2 months ago Edwin tried to sell me one of his spoilers, he offered to me as "Werks1 rear wing style" (I still have the PM)...

This is moral? Legal?

I prefer to keep my car stock if I can't afford good aftermarkets...

 

So you will buy a 997 TT made in China!

 

Simmer down gents. This is just Economics 101. It doesn’t matter what you call it---copying, imitating, making an exact replica, duplication. My prior comments fit all of those terms and they all are a huge part of this economy that every one of you take advantage of everyday. So nothing new offered up since my last post—a good reason to bow out after this to avoid things getting endless and pointless.
My business is not involved in producing duplicates, so I don’t have any dog in this dust up except that of an observer with a lot of experience in successful businesses. We know that if we have a patentable product and are not willing to obtain patent protection for it, or the product is not patentable, there is a good chance it will be copied—meaning exactly copied using our product as a template. No one can dispute that this is a well-known, really a ho hum, factor in business gents---sanctioned by law, participated in by producers and consumers by the millions, embedded in our system. Is it unfair? No more so than when someone was willing to hand me the football and the 255 lb. all conference middle linebacker rang my bell. Was that unfair? He played by the rules. I had seen the films and knew he was going to bring it. I had to accept that to suit up. Same with product duplication in business. You know when you suit up it is permitted, widely in use, and broadly embraced by the American consumer. It’s part of the business landscape. The point is to plan accordingly and not get your bell rung.

 

Lucasfilm Ltd had no problem issuing Cease and Desist orders to replica prop forum builders. A few builders were eventually sued.

Maybe we need some of that around here..."fear will keep the local systems in line."

All it takes is money.

 

CMS could take that email of yours to an intellectual property rights lawyer and have them for breakfast....no question. Copying their spoiler is one thing but using the term Werks1 to promote the sale is a clear breach of intellectual property rights and the offender would be in a lot of trouble legally....no question. The copied spoiler would only serve as further evidence. Frankly if that was my spoiler and someone did that to me they would be gone big time and they would be giving me all the profits from every single one they've sold to date amongst other damages. Been there done that. These copy cats are on dangerous ground once they start playing with someone else's intellectual property rights to promote sales of their rubbish. The main reason behind why some i've seen here are still doing it (i.e VR and the TA replicas) is only because they have been foolishly let get away with it.

 

I agree my friend....

Tom here is the picture of the PM....

Here is the Copy of the PM.... just so you guys know i'm not BS