Newsgroup: it.sport.golf
Titolo: PSST, WANNA BUY SOME CLUBS (Occhio, articolo molto lungo in inglese da Sports Illustrated)

Pssst... Wanna Buy Some Clubs?
Golfers spend millions a year on counterfeits and knockoffs. To find out how
this burgeoning industry works, we went right to the source: southern China
BY E.M. SWIFT AND DON YAEGER
The trap, months in the planning, had been laid. The quarry, a beautiful
Chinese businesswoman named Lily Wan, had taken the bait. The sting,
code-named Operation Tiger Lily, a joint venture of Callaway Golf
investigators and the Orange County, Florida, sheriff's office, was about to
take place. The site chosen for the meeting was symbolic of how brazen the
sellers of counterfeit golf clubs had become. It was the lobby of the Rosen
Centre Hotel in Orlando, host city of the biggest, most prestigious golf
show in the world. Large and small clubmakers, component dealers, importers,
distributors, wholesalers and retailers, not to mention journalists and club
pros, congregate at the PGA Merchandise Show every January to admire, sample
and network, trying to get a handle on the Next Big Thing. This year they
also commiserated. The boom times are over in the golf business. The low
fruit has been picked from the boughs.
Except in Lily Wan's end of the business. Counterfeiting has been on the
rise for about a decade, ever since U.S. golf companies began subcontracting
club production in China. Of the major manufacturers, only Ping still makes
most of its clubs in the U.S. The other big brands-Adams, Callaway,
Cleveland, Cobra, Nike, TaylorMade, Titleist-make most of their club heads
in China's Pearl River Delta region, where the combination of cheap skilled
labor and technical expertise has created manufacturing's perfect storm.
"It's a no-brainer to be there," says Chip Brewer, CEO of Adams Golf. "The
Chinese produce golf clubs of consistently high quality at unbeatable costs.
They are very good capitalists, creative and hardworking. But that same
entrepreneurial spirit also creates other issues."
Issues like theft of intellectual property. "Where you have legitimate
manufacturing in China, you will always have problems with counterfeiting,"
says David Fernyhough, a former Hong Kong police officer who is a director
of the private-investigation firm Hill & Associates. "It's worse now than
it's ever been." And perpetrators seldom feel they're doing anything wrong.
They make and sell products-CDs, clothing, toys, electronics, golf
clubs-more cheaply than the brand-name guys, offering consumers a comparable
product at a lower cost. What's wrong with that? Plenty, according to the
U.S. companies that spend millions in research and development to design the
products being copied. For starters, Article I of the U.S. Constitution
gives inventors exclusive rights to their "discoveries."
Lily Wan was a new name in a game with endlessly rotating players. A private
investigator in the United Kingdom suspected Wan's firm, Hong Kong Cedar
International Investment, Ltd., of shipping counterfeit Callaways to Europe
and informed the club manufacturer. So when the sleuth learned that Wan
would attend the Professional Golfers' Association's show, Callaway's
security director, Stu Herrington, began plotting with the investigator's
company, Intellekt, to shut her down.
Intellekt set up a dummy corporation, Servitrade, Inc., which purported to
represent 400 sporting-goods stores in the U.S. and Canada. Then Herrington
enlisted the help of detective Ray Wood of the Orange County sheriff's
office, who posed as a Servitrade executive. They contacted Wan to say they
were interested in placing an order. They'd be in Orlando for the show and
wanted to see some of her products. She promised to meet them on Saturday
night.
She arrived looking like a Bond vixen: 157 centimeters tall, weighing 48
kilograms, stylish and attractive in her dark, tailored suit. She exchanged
business cards with Herrington and Wood and, after brief pleasantries, laid
counterfeits of a Callaway ERC II driver, a Great Big Bertha II and a
Steelhead X-16 iron on a coffee table, in plain view of anyone strolling
past. The men examined the copies carefully. "In China everyone knows they
are not real," Wan said.
"The Great Big Bertha was a very, very impressive copy," says Herrington,
who has been tracking down the Lily Wans of the world for Callaway for the
past five years. "She gave us a price of $33 a head, delivered, or $32 with
a volume discount." A generic graphite shaft might cost an additional $6; a
grip, 50¢. Total outlay: $38.50 for a first-rate copy of a club that retails
for $499. Wan even volunteered to blacken the soles of the clubs with
water-soluble paint to hide the Callaway trademark. Servitrade could simply
rinse off the paint once the clubs cleared customs. She also asked about the
best routes to smuggle the clubs into the country.
Although Herrington is loath to reveal specifics of the conversation, he and
Wan discussed the fact that many golf-club counterfeiters fly their
shipments to Vancouver or Toronto, then truck them into the U.S. Another
method, according to U.S. customs officials, is transshipping: sending the
merchandise first to a country not associated with counterfeit golf
clubs-say, the Netherlands-thus avoiding the red flag that cargo from Taiwan
or China might raise. Counterfeiters also smuggle club components in
containers filled with legal goods, such as ceramics or auto parts. Or they
simply list their cargo as something else on the shipping bill, playing the
odds that it will get through amid the mass of foreign goods flooding U.S.
docks. Six thousand containers a day are shipped to the U.S. from Hong Kong,
according to the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, and only 2%
are physically inspected.
After an hour or so of such banter, Herrington and Wood identified
themselves to Wan. "She insisted she'd done nothing wrong," Herrington
recalls. "When we asked her where the clubs were made, she claimed she
didn't know. She said some Chinese man named Joe had come up to her with the
stuff on the streets of Hong Kong." Herrington confiscated the samples, and
Wood delivered a stern lecture to the distraught Wan on the penalties she
could face. In the end, though, he let her go, and she bolted. Although
trafficking in counterfeit goods is a felony, "it's difficult if not
impossible now to prosecute," says Wood, because so much attention is
focused on combating terrorism. Two years ago Wan might have been put behind
bars. Today, Wood notes, "U.S. law enforcement has bigger fish to fry."
Still, from Herrington's point of view the sting was a success. "We really
scared her," he says. "She's never coming back here."
Others are, though. "Now that so much legitimate business has moved to
China, the counterfeit market can't be stopped," says Ken Gaul, the U.S.
customs agent who spearheaded Project Teed Off, which resulted in 14
indictments and the seizure of $6 million worth of counterfeit golf
merchandise in 1999. "At this year's show in Orlando, I saw an Asian man
taking pictures of a golf club from several angles. Everyone knew what he
was doing."
Those photographs, industry experts say, could have been digitally
transmitted to a tooling factory in China, converted into three-dimensional
form by means of a computer program and used to create a copper master of a
head that could be ready for mass production in two weeks. "It takes us over
a year to design a new club, using sophisticated computer programs that
require the expertise of very experienced engineers," says Barney Adams,
founder and chairman of Adams Golf. "If the club's a success, copies are on
the market in 60 days. It's reprehensible. To get into the copying business,
all you need is to take a couple of drivers and irons you like, fly to Hong
Kong, and voilá, you could be in the knockoff business tomorrow."
How much all this costs the golf industry is difficult to gauge. According
to the National Golf Foundation, U.S. consumers spent $2.8 billion last year
on golf clubs, some 70% of which came from China. If only 10% of those sales
involved illegal knockoffs and counterfeits-some experts believe that figure
might be higher-that would amount to nearly $200 million.
Jethro Liou is an expert in the knockoff business. A boyish 25-year-old
Californian, he has been selling golf clubs since he was 15. After school he
would make cold calls for his father, Ren-Jei (R.J.) Liou, asking pro shops
and discount stores if they wanted to order from his line of clubs. R.J.
owned Kent Graphtec, an importer of club components from Taiwan and, later,
China. He'd have the components assembled at his warehouse outside of Los
Angeles and would distribute them to retailers all over the U.S. "The golf
business was so good between 1991 and '97, you could sell anything," Jethro
says. "We were one of the first companies to import from China."
Kent Graphtec dealt primarily in knockoff clubs, products with names such as
King Snake and Big Bursar-simulations of the popular clubs King Cobra and
Big Bertha. "The customs people thought my father was [the primary
distributor of] King Snake, which in its heyday had something like 10% of
the market," Jethro says, "but a lot of people were importing that product."
A lot of people eventually got in trouble for it too. "There are different
levels of counterfeiting," says Debra Peterson, a U.S. customs official who
was involved in Project Teed Off. There is the direct counterfeit, which is
a dead-on copy that carries the legitimate product's trademark, and that's
illegal. Also illegal is a club that is very close to a direct copy and is
termed either "confusingly similar" (if it infringes on company trademarks)
or "substantially similar" (if it infringes on design patents). What is
legal is the generic look-alike that does not infringe on a company's
trademarks or patents. Some features of a driver-its head size, for
instance-cannot be protected, but others can. But with confusingly or
substantially similar knockoffs, the line between legality and patent or
trademark infringement is often fuzzy and is subject to legal challenge and
interpretation. A counterfeiter tries to alter a company's protected
features just enough to avoid prosecution. Whether the result is illegal can
be established only in court, on a case-by-case basis; in other words, the
aggrieved company has to sue.
Callaway threatened to sue Kent Graphtec over its Big Bursar driver,
alleging patent, trademark and trade dress (trademark-design) infringement.
In 1997 R.J. Liou reached a settlement with Callaway. Four years later, in
March 2001, the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles ruled that R.J. Liou,
Kent Graphtec and Trophy Sports-a separate company started by Jethro and his
mother, Yeh-Chyn, in late 2000-had breached the settlement by continuing to
sell Big Bursars. The court ordered the defendants to pay $20,000 in damages
to Callaway and to turn over their inventory of more than 11,500 infringing
components for Callaway to destroy. According to Jethro, the family's legal
fees for the discovery phase alone came to more than $1 million.
By then, Jethro's parents had divorced, and Jethro had fallen out with his
father. Kent Graphtec officially went out of business, though R.J. is now
back in business on his own, according to Jethro.
The market for knockoff clubs, meanwhile, remains huge and lucrative, and
Trophy Sports is a major player in it. Trophy's Integra line offers
look-alikes of several major clubs. In February, TaylorMade sent Trophy a
cease-and-desist letter alleging design-patent infringement, and Trophy
agreed to stop importing and selling the Integra Bomber 880 driver, a
knockoff of TaylorMade's Burner 420. Jethro Liou says he spends $10,000 a
month on lawyers' fees. Lawsuits are just part of the cost of doing
business.
Liou also represents a dozen clubmakers, importing for a long list of
Internet-based dealers and discount retailers, including Kmart. All told,
Liou says, he sells a million golf clubs a year-roughly equivalent to
TaylorMade, which sold 89,282 clubs in March. And recently Liou bought a
Mexican foundry, Cast Alloys, which he is disassembling and relocating to
China.
A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, Liou is fluent in
Mandarin and Taiwanese. A recent three-day swing with him through the Pearl
River Delta provided a rare look inside China's burgeoning golf industry.
Liou flew into Hong Kong and from the airport he took a bus to Dongguan, 1
1/2 hours to the north. Dongguan is one of China's industrial meccas, a city
of 1.4 million people where private enterprise flourishes. Workers flock
there from poor farms in central China, providing cheap labor for
manufacturers that have relocated to Dongguan from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan
and the U.S. The bus passed miles and miles of factories, many operating 24
hours a day to satisfy the appetites of Western consumers.
One of the factories was the Unimold Manufacturing Co., Ltd., which sent a
car to meet Liou's bus. Unimold is a tooling factory, the first stop in
golf-club construction after the club is designed. According to Rob
Duncanson, an attorney for several brands, including Titleist, Cobra and
TaylorMade, the tooling factory is also where the manufacture of
counterfeits begins. "The R.-and-D. department of a company in California
comes up with a new design for a club and must transfer that proprietary
information to the vendor," Duncanson says. "The company doesn't own the
vendor. It has a contractual relationship with him. The company says it will
pay X dollars to turn this design into a master, from which a tool will be
made. The tool is used to mass-produce the club head. The problem is,
there's no control over the proprietary design when it gets to China.
There's a six- to eight-week period during which they develop the master and
send samples back and forth for approval, and things can happen."
Unimold, which has been in Dongguan for five years, employs 60 workers. They
work 12-hour days, seven days a week, and are paid about $100 a month, plus
room and board, according to the manager, Hu Gui Dong. During Liou's
45-minute visit, Unimold's workers were hand-tooling masters for a set of
Tommy Armour irons and a Mizuno driver. On an open shelf on the wall were
copper molds for some of Unimold's other customers, including Dunlop,
Spalding, TaylorMade and Adams. Unimold charges $1,200 for a copper master
of a driver. This is the intellectual property of the company that designed
the club, but in this tooling factory there are no security guards, no
surveillance cameras and no metal detectors to prevent a worker from lifting
a copper master. On the street, Liou estimates, a finished copper master of
a brand-name club might fetch $10,000-an unimaginable fortune to these
workers.
That afternoon Liou made a call on one of his biggest vendors, Unitech Golf
Co., Ltd., a casting company on the outskirts of Dongguan. It's a
medium-sized operation by China's standards, employing 200 people and
cranking out 100,000-130,000 club heads a month for 10-20 little-known
companies, such as Akia, Echelon, Pax and Velocity. This may be Knockoff
Central, but the care that goes into the construction of each club head is
mind boggling. There are 200 steps involved between the tooling and the
shipping of a head. The wax has to be mixed, injected, cooled and trimmed;
the casts have to be scraped, welded and polished; the heads have to be
taped, painted, stacked and inspected. Fifty to 60 workers touch every club
head as it is made-a club head that at the end of the day might be sold to
Liou for $4 or $5. There are no paid vacations or sick days, no workers'
compensation or maternity leave. And if orders fall off, the owner can let a
worker go with one day's notice. Modern communist China is a 19th century
industrial capitalist's dream.
Five years ago, said Jimy Wang, the owner of Unitech, the land around his
factory was farmland. This area is called Tangxia, and it is home to 20
factories that make both legitimate and illegal clubs. Since February 2002
the population of Tangxia has doubled, to 400,000. Security measures are
much more elaborate at Unitech than they are at the Unimold tooling factory.
The front gate is locked and manned by armed guards. There are five security
officers among the company's 200 employees, not to mention surveillance
cameras overlooking the factory floor. Still, Wang admitted, no security
system is foolproof. Wax molds have a way of vanishing out the back door.
"Every factory experiences theft," he said.
Wang, dressed stylishly in a black designer T shirt, black pants and a belt
with a gold buckle, is relatively new to the golf business. His capital came
from his other line of work: a karaoke bar that he owns in Dongguan. Another
line of capital for some illegal club manufacturers may come from Chinese
triads, or crime syndicates, which have long been suspected of using some
foundries to launder money from prostitution, drugs and gambling operations.
"They are involved, guaranteed," says Fernyhough, the private investigator
who spent 14 years working for the Hong Kong police pursuing the Chinese
Mafia. "Golf clubs are a high-markup item, and anything that has a high
margin in it, they will be into."
Xiamen, a city of 655,000 people on the South China Sea, is across the
Taiwan Strait from Taiwan. Its port is the 10th largest in the world in
terms of volume of goods shipped to the U.S., and many Taiwanese businesses
have moved there since mainland China opened itself to foreign investment.
Many of those businesses are golf related. "Ten years ago 70-80% of the
counterfeits and illegal knockoffs were made in Taiwan, and only 20-25% in
China," says Callaway's Herrington. "But since 1992 or '93, when the
Taiwanese government began to enforce intellectual-property laws, and
Taiwanese labor costs rose in relation to China's, those percentages have
flip-flopped. Now 70-80% of the counterfeits come from China, financed by
Taiwanese investors."
Theft of intellectual property is illegal in China, but prosecution is
selective. A counterfeiter might be arrested after failing to pay off a
government official or after a U.S. company protests so vehemently that an
example must be made. And if convicted, the worst punishment a counterfeiter
suffers is a modest fine.
Yarn-Way Enterprise Co. is one of the companies that relocated to Xiamen
from Taiwan. Yarn-Way makes graphite shafts, producing some 450,000 a month,
and Liou is one of its most valued customers. Liou flew to Xiamen on his
second morning in China, and Yarn-Way sent a car to meet him at the airport.
He gave Andy Zhu, the sales representative who handles his account, a long
triangular cardboard box he had carried all the way from the States. Inside
was a TaylorMade wedge. Within minutes a graphics designer at Yarn-Way had
downloaded the logo from the TaylorMade shaft onto a computer screen and was
making minor design and color alterations to it. He incorporated the word
Integra into the logo and then submitted it to Liou for approval. The
altered logo would be applied to the graphite shafts Yarn-Way was making for
Liou's Integra line. "All you have to do is make a few changes to keep
anyone from suing you," Zhu said of equipment that walks the fine line
between what's legal and what's not.
In the afternoon Liou visited another of his vendors, the Aetenshun Casting
house, where Dunlop, Hippo, Integra, Maxfli, Ram and Tommy Armour club heads
are made. Along one wall of the factory's formal conference room was a
display case of the dozens of club heads made by Aetenshun. As Liou surveyed
them, he picked out two TaylorMade driver heads, casually identifying them
as counterfeits. The manager of the factory feigned disbelief until Liou
pointed out an imperfection in the lettering and noted the hollow sound
emitted from the head when he pinged it. The manager, recovering, said that
now he remembered. Those two TaylorMade heads had been a gift. He couldn't
remember who'd brought them.
"The company that really should have its antennae up now is Nike," Liou said
later. "It's a hot brand with an expensive product, and it's new to the
business."
Mike Kelly, the business director for Nike Golf, says one of the steps the
company has taken to discourage counterfeiters is to put ultraviolet
markings on its shafts, so U.S. customs inspectors can identify them as
legitimate with the wave of a blacklight wand. Serial numbers are engraved
on the hosels too, and according to Kelly, Nike plans to put a serial
number-checking system on its website.
Such a system would certainly have helped Scott Fong, a computer engineer in
Rocklin, California, who logged on to eBay last summer and purchased what
was described as a set of new Callaway X-14 irons. His winning bid? A hefty
$725, for clubs that would have cost $1,040 at retail. When the irons
arrived, they were in their original packaging, individually wrapped. But
Fong, a 16 handicapper, noticed some slight imperfections in the Callaway
lettering. Worried, he took the irons to the practice range and discovered
that he had more trouble than usual hitting them straight. When he compared
them with Callaway demos at the clubhouse, he found that his club heads were
slightly larger than the demos'. He contacted Callaway, which put Stu
Herrington on the case.
Fong sent Herrington the clubs he'd bought, and Herrington confirmed that
they were counterfeits. The seller, who was from Toronto, was eventually
raided by Canadian police and his eBay auction shut down. But how many other
buyers had he hoodwinked? And what about the dozens of other eBay sellers
who peddle illegal knockoffs? "We took down 618 Internet auctions in 2002
and 60 in the first six weeks of 2003," says Ken Parker, corporate counsel
for Callaway. "Not a day goes by that we don't deal with it."
All of which has raised the cost of legal clubs. Who's the victim of
counterfeiting? The legitimate manufacturer and, of course, the consumer.
"Our product-development group spends one-third of its time studying other
patents and establishing and enforcing our own patents worldwide," Nike's
Kelly says. "Plus, we constantly monitor the Internet. Then there's the cost
of adding the serial numbers and ultraviolet codes and of establishing a
serial number-checking system. All that gets passed on to the consumer."
Why, then, do all those U.S. clubmakers continue to use Chinese foundries,
the track records of which in protecting intellectual-property rights are so
horrendous? "If we didn't, your $400 driver would cost $1,000," says Barney
Adams. "Making a golf club is still very labor intensive. We understand the
risks of doing business over there. We do the best we can to minimize them,
and we move on."
One of the most significant breakthroughs in golf-club production in recent
years has been the use of titanium, notably in drivers. Titanium is stronger
and lighter than steel, enabling manufacturers to make ever-larger club
heads with ever-bigger sweet spots that propel the ball ever farther. Most
of the titanium in golf clubs comes from Russia or northern China, and most
of the foundries that work with it are in or near Guangzhou.
Only a two-hour drive or 90-minute ferry ride from Hong Kong, Guangzhou is a
city of 3.8 million people and about 100 golf manufacturers, if you count
the makers of accessories such as bags and shoes. But only seven foundries
in the city work with titanium, which requires a significant investment in
specialized equipment.
One of these foundries is Maxwin Golf. Its owner, David Chiang, is
Taiwanese.
He moved to Guangzhou in 1989, becoming the second golf manufacturer in the
city. Between 1991 and 1997, he made good money. Since then, business has
been spotty. Many deep-pocketed, publicly traded companies from Taiwan have
moved to this part of China, and competition has been fierce. Fortunately,
Chiang said, he started a karaoke club on the side, where with 60 girls,
profits are more reliable.
Chiang, wearing a counterfeit Versace jacket with Adidas buttons, conducted
a tour of his factory for Liou but said the third floor of his plant was,
unfortunately, off-limits. Something that no one was allowed to see was
going on there. "Any company that makes things in China will experience
theft," Chiang said. "Employees make so little money, they're always going
to steal and sell molds on the open market. In Guangzhou alone there are
three factories that do nothing but make counterfeits and copies. We have
our employees line up after work, and we search them. We have metal
detectors at both of our entrances and security cameras at all the
workstations. If they're caught stealing, they're fired, and I'll call the
police. But it won't ever stop. The copy and counterfeit market is too
large."
Callaway was so concerned about security at the Fu Sheng company, its main
manufacturer in China, that it sent Herrington there three times in 2002. He
offered a bonus equivalent to a year's salary to anyone who turned in a
co-worker for theft. He also made sure that Callaway clubs were manufactured
in their own building, separate from the building that made Nike clubs.
Despite these and other safeguards, wax molds of the newest, hottest clubs
still disappear. "We cannot guarantee 100% against theft," said Fu Sheng's
president, P.Z. Lin.
When Callaway learned that a foundry in Guangzhou, Shunde Jackson Precision
Industries Corp., was wrongly representing itself to customers as an
authorized Callaway manufacturer, Herrington began an investigation. It's a
frustrating endeavor. "We're running a big investigation there, and it's
pretty unsatisfying," Herrington says. "I can spend $100,000, invest three
to six months hiring investigators in China to follow trucks and gather
evidence of wrongdoing. We file an affidavit with the Chinese
anticounterfeiting authorities and stage a raid. But the counterfeiters are
back in business within a week. The fines and forfeitures are minimal.
They're happy to pay the fines as a cost of doing business."
So, for the first time in a decade, there are rumors that some U.S.
companies are rethinking their involvement in China. Callaway is believed by
some of its competitors to be considering a move back to Mexico, a rumor
that Callaway's senior vice president of global press and public relations,
Larry Dorman, doesn't dismiss out of hand. "We continue to explore
relationships with other vendors, but that decision will be made on the
basis of quality and price, not security," he says. "Wherever your vendors
are located, there are issues with intellectual-property theft. Proximity
does not mean better security."
Others have simply thrown up their hands. "When it finally dawned on me what
the culture was over there," says Barney Adams, whose company will continue
to make its clubs in China, "I realized we were never going to win this war.
Most golf companies are losing their asses right now. One of the fallacies
about golf is that we're an industry. We're so busy trying to cut one
another's throats, we don't cooperate. Callaway wouldn't dream of working
with TaylorMade. If we pooled our knowledge and resources, we'd have a lot
better chance of fighting [counterfeiters]."
The final stop on Jethro Liou's three-day tour of his vendors' facilities
was Deson Golf Sport Co., Ltd., in Shunde, a suburb of Guangzhou. This
factory, too, works with titanium. It had 13 tons of it stacked in a locked
storage room. One hundred sixty people work at the plant, which is clean,
modern and well lit, churning out 40,000 heads a month for Dunlop, Knight,
Pinseeker, Pro Select, Ram and other companies. About 500 models of club
heads are on display, there for a client's inspection.
Liou stopped during the factory tour and lingered over one club head. It was
the mold for something called a Power 420. The model that Liou sells to
Kmart is called the Super 420, which is also made at the Deson factory. The
lettering, size and scoring on both club faces were identical. Liou called
over the president of Deson, a man named Su Hiao, and in a moment rich with
irony, complained that the Power 420 appeared to be a direct knockoff of,
and confusingly similar to, the Super 420 (which is a knockoff of
TaylorMade's 300 Series drivers). Liou had planned to order as many as
30,000 Super 420s every two months to keep Kmart supplied. Why would Hiao
risk losing that?
Smoothly, with élan, Hiao dismissed the Power 420 as a one-of-a-kind sample.
He couldn't remember why it had been made or what it was doing there. He'd
be sure to find out, after he finished with the tour.
Asked if he thought the golf industry in China would ever consolidate, Hiao
smiled and shook his head. "If one factory is taken over, another one will
be born," he said. "Everyone in China wants to work for himself, to be an
entrepreneur. Workers save their money, pool their resources, buy a
polishing machine, and all of a sudden you have a new factory." In the past
four years two of Hiao's managers have left to start finishing factories.
Could his factory, he was asked, put a logo-any logo-on a golf club? Say, a
Sports Illustrated logo? "Absolutely," he replied. "We can do almost
anything here."
-From Sports Illustrated. With reporting by TIME's Joyce Huang/Taipei
-- 
---
Massimo Gentilini
www.phillo.it
"Play Golf, Will Travel"

 colto da scrivite acuta osava
affermare:
[stramegacut]
Grazie per l'ottimo articolo.
Si evince tutto quello che abbiamo sempre detto, non sono i produttori
dei brand che producono i cloni, chi produce cloni è un ladro ( non
conosco altro modo per definire chi ruba dei progetti o delle teste ),
chi distribuisce da noi i cloni commette reato , a chi compra come
minimo bisognerebbe dare l'incauto acquisto.
Ciao
wolly
P.S.: sempre meglio comprare un set usato
-- 
"Basta pagare marchette ai circoli , Tessera Federale direttamente dalla Federazione #1 ( tessera n° 1)
"Voglio avere il diritto di essere un peones #1"
Il tempo è un grande Maestro. Sfortunatamente ammazza tutti i suoi allievi.
                                                     H. Berlioz --

 minimo bisognerebbe dare l'incauto acquisto.
  Ragazzi, non commettete il grave errore di mettere sullo stesso piano
cloni e copie illegali. Un conto è vendere un clone col suo nome, un
altro (e di quelli tratta l'articolo) è vendere una copia col nome
dell'originale... I primi sono perfettamente legali, i secondi
ovviamente no.
- Pse
-- 
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - 
http://www.Mailgate.ORG

- Pse
Scusami se ti correggo ma, se tu vendi una copia , rompendone il
brevetto anche se non c'è il nome commetti reato.
Altra cosa è comprare qualcosa che somiglia all'origninale ma con
modifiche tali che non rompi più il brevetto.
CLone intende una copia " uguale"
ciao
wolly


Secondo me wolly sbagli: l'imitazione delle cose è realtà vecchia come il
mondo e perfettamente legale.
I cloni dei bastoni son perfettamente legali e se fossi o produttore o
rivenditore di cloni ti farei causa domani mattina per calunnia a mezzo
stampa.
quando ero giovane c'erano le scarpe da ginnastica con 5 o 6 o 7 strisce al
posto delle 3 della Adidas che si chiamavano "addas o adddas oaddddddas"
.quelle erano legalissime
C'erano poi i venditori di false lacoste marcate lacoste e con il
coccodrillo. Magliette false , taroccate e illegali
La cosa mi sembra esattamente diversa.
Per fare un esempio ulteriore : molte auto si assomigliano , ma nessun
produttore fa causa ad un altro per plagio .
P.S: Ho comprato dei faretti e un lampadario bellissimi da IKEA uguali e
precisi nello stile a quelli di una famosa marca che costano molto di più .
Se però scrivessi su questo forum che IKEA è una ditta che "ruba" brand mi
troverei una truppa di avvocati svedesi fuori dalla porta domani mattina.


Studiati bene la legge sui brevetti, diritti di forma ecc, poi fammi
sapere.
Un conto è copiare ciò che non è protetto e un conto è copiare ciò che
è protetto.
Ripeto informati ho già portato a casa dei bei danè su idee come la
tua
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"FPruneri"  ha scritto:
[cut]
Cari FPruneri e Pse,
penso che ormai la maggiornza dei lettori di ISG abbia capito che:
1. I cloni sono prodotti diversi dalle sottomarche
2. Le sottomarche possono avere una buona qualità a prezzi vantaggiosi
3. La migliore scelta resta spesso l'originale trovato a prezzi
scontati oppure usato
4. I cloni sono di qualità molto scarsa e non comparabile agli
originali
5. Clonare dei prodotti arreca danno a chi investe nella ricerca
6. Clonare è un'attività al limite del legale se non oltre
e questo a me basta e avanza.
A risentirci

 che di cause per questo motivo ne ho vinte tante.
mi fai degli esempi ? con numero di pratice etc .etc . che le faccio cercare
?

 dalla porta domani mattina.
Fossero avvocatesse svedesi potrebbe anche non essere così male...
Saluti
Massimo
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Voi siete a conoscenza di cause civili intentate dai brand maggiori contro
questi produttori ?

 e pensi che il venditore sia un ladro ?
Occhio, l'articolo parla di veri e propri cloni esatti, non dei cloni
"normali", tipo quelli che ha Golf Prime.
C'era un esempio nel forum di golfopinions di una persona che viaggia spesso
in cina ed aveva visto delle teste Titleist 983K, con scritte, marchi e
tutto in regola vendute nel distretto industriale cinese a 35 dollari cash.
Ne compri 10, compri 10 shaft Graphite Design YS6, 10 grip Titleist (si
trovano come ricambi) e con neanche 800 dollari di materiale hai in casa 10
drive che vendi su eBay a 300 dollari l'uno.
Questa č certamente una truffa, quelle delle copie sicuramente si puň
condannare moralmente ma vendere delle Lacoste mettendoci una lucertola
invece del coccodrillo e chiamandole Lacroste mi sa che non te la passi
neppure il giudice piů cattivo del mondo.
Saluti
Massimo
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> e questo a me basta e avanza.
Ma se fanno tutti come te si smette di discutere in fretta e finisce il
divertimento!!! 8-)
Saluti
Massimo
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Forse ti difetta l'inglese o forse ci fai.
L'articolo di cui si parla e che è l'inizio del 3d parla di dipendenti
di aziende cinesi che rubano teste e/o progetti di prodotti coperti da
brevetto in occidente. Credo quindi che dovresti rileggerti con
attenzione l'articolo e il mio post .
E tu come chiami chi ruba ?
Il link che hai postato non significa nulla non credo che da una foto
sia possibile capire se quella è una copia che ha rotto il brevetto o
semplicemente un oggetto simile ma che non rompe il brevetto.
Se leggi con attenzione l'articolo c'è scritto anche questo.
Se poi non hai letto l'articolo postato nel 3d è un altra questione,
ti piace polemizzare per niente e sei OT.
Se vuoi apriamo un altro 3d senza quell'articolo e scriviamo a ruota
libera su ciò che è copia illegale e su ciò che no lo è e andiamo di
link in link e di sentenza in sentenza, se vuoi possiamo anche
discutere della liceità di brevetto sulle molecole salva vita o sui
farmaci anti aids che potrebbero salvare migliaia di vite nei paesi
del terzo mondo oppure del fatto che alcuni paesi (india) sempre per
lo stesso motivo abbiano deciso di "rompere" alcuni brevetti però,
credo che in questo ng sia OT quindi adesso cerco se c'è un NG adatto
oppure fai il manifesto e creiamolo così possiamo discutere di tutto
ciò.
Ciao
wolly
P.S. è il mio ultimo post su quest'argomento in questo ng.
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 ha scritto nel messaggio
news:bl98r0$9h6nc$1...@ID-112744.news.uni-berlin.de...
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 colto da scrivite acuta osava
affermare:
http://www.callawaygolf.com/italy/statements/counterfeit.asp
-- 
"Basta pagare marchette ai circoli , Tessera Federale direttamente dalla Federazione #1 ( tessera n° 1)
"Voglio avere il diritto di essere un peones #1"
Il tempo č un grande Maestro. Sfortunatamente ammazza tutti i suoi allievi.
                                                     H. Berlioz --

ed è per quello magari che su Ebay si trovano prezzi allucinanti ?
Aspettano il pollo italico ?

 6. Clonare è un'attività al limite del legale se non oltre
   Il danno può starci. Ma, almeno per il volume di affari attuale, è
senz'altro minimo.
Per quanto riguarda la legalità, invece, ti sbagli di grosso. I cloni
sono venduti alla luce del sole ed in perfetta legalità. Cerca su
qualche sito USA che li commercializza... Ad esempio questo link
potrebbe risultare interessante :
http://www.pinemeadowgolf.com/clubs101_5.html
Ripeto, un clone NON E' un prodotto contraffatto, venduto con marchi non
propri. E nemmeno un prodotto che mira, con la somiglianza di forma e
nome, a confondere il consumatore, perchè sarebbe ugualmente illegale.
E' solo un prodotto di una casa differente, che punta ad assomigliare in
prestazioni, grazie a forma e materiali, ad un prodotto di marca. Ma le
somiglianze terminano lì. Che poi il risultato sia soddisfacente o meno,
credo che solo il campo possa confermarlo...
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 forma e nome, a confondere il consumatore, perchè sarebbe ugualmente
Allora prendiamo questo:
http://www.pinemeadowgolf.com/cgibin/ecart/ecart.pl?command=link--irons.i1077
139 dollari per 8 ferri. Fanno 17 dollari ed un po per ogni ferro.
Uno shaft in acciaio scarserrimo, anche comperato all'ingrosso, costa circa
3 dollari.
Mettiamoci 2 dollari di grip (anche questo fetente, di quelli che ti fanno
diventare neri i guanti e diventano di plastica dopo che li hai lasciati nel
baule della macchina 2 giorni)
Diciamo 6 dollari per la testa e il po di dollaro che rimaneva per il
rimanente (ferrule, colla)
Rimangono 6 dollari  da dedicare all'assemblaggio ed al ricavo del titolare
di PineMeadow. Mi consenti di dubitare che, con un margine di questo tipo,
l'assemblaggio sia fatto a regola d'arte e che il nostro clubmaker di Pine
Meadow abbia tempo per controllare che gli swingweight siano uguali,
loft&lie siano negli standard e che la rigidità di tutti i bastoni sia la
stessa??? E se la colla non è buona e durante uno swing si stacca una testa
e colpisce un tuo compagno di gioco come la mettiamo? Non è mica un'ipotesi
così strana, io quest'anno a reincollare teste che si staccavano da bastoni
più o meno di marca ho finito un tubo di colla!
Ribadisco: se ti sei mai costruito un set di ferri sai di cosa sto parlando,
altrimenti prima documentati, poi parliamo, non si tratta di dire che i
ferri siano buoni o no, è che, normalmente ed in tutti i settori, quello che
spendi è quello che ottieni, fino ad un certo limite oltre il quale paghi
solo per un nome o una filosofia. Nel golf questo prezzo è sicuramente più
basso dei 1100 euro di un set di ferri di marca da Decathlon, ma è
certamente più alto dei 139 dollari di cui sopra. Basta saperlo.
Saluti
Massimo
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"Pse Psepse"  ha scritto:
[cut]
Caro Pse,
se vuoi compra i cloni, giocaci, assemblali, producili e mettiti a
venderli, ti auguro buona fortuna.
Personalmente non sono più interessato a continuare la discussione, ho
già espresso il mio punto di vista.
Luigi

 -- 
Per me state parlando due lingue diverse:
uno è comprare in spiaggia la borsa Prada a 30 euro, uno è comprare la borsa
che "assomiglia" alla Prada ma si chiama Bingo, questo non è assolutamente
illegale.
Se però la borsa assomiglia alla Prada ma si chiama Brada e utilizza il logo
di Prada modificato immagino che la
cosa sia alquanto diversa.
Se affrontassimo il discorso PC clonati potremmo andare avanti per mesi e la
discussione coinciderebbe spesso con questa.
Nel caso dei bastoni poi sappiamo bene che le spese "extra" relative al
marchio incidono e non poco sul prezzo finale dell'oggetto. E non credo che
siano solo legate alla ricerca ed ai test.
Tiger con un bel ferro 4 di marca X che vi sorride dalle pagine di tutti i
giornali di golf del mondo incide eccome sul prezzo finale del ferro, non
posso credere altrimenti, visto che parliamo di compensi nell'ordine di
milioni di dollari.
Se poi aggiungete che in ogni circolo ci sono i "campioni" che cambiano set
ogni tre mesi e vogliono solo quelli usati da Ernie o Tiger beh, il mercato
è così, e i prezzi vanno di pari passo.
Io ho comprato un driver "clone" (aaaaahhhhhhh ora abbiamo capito!!! :-)  )
gli ho fatto montare un buon shaft e un grip decente e, a detta di giocatori
più esperti (il mio giudizio conterebbe meno di niente) non ha niente da
invidiare ad un driver dal prezzo doppio o triplo. E' molto lungo, perdona
molto (persino me) ed è facile da usare. In più fa un bel suono (e non
ditemi che non conta nulla!!!).
Vi segnalo questa pagina del sito Pinemeadows che tratta l'argomento:
http://www.pinemeadowgolf.com/clubs101_5.html
Saluti
Andrea
-
Ho visto un atleta mangiare 2 primi 3 secondi e 4 decimi