Warning!! Wagner RS2 EVO EM Copies...

[Trist28]

Cheers Sonic, that makes some sense now and just shows how little this guy knows..... Has someone told him 034 sell Wagners stuff lol....

I think he incorrectly believes that the pictures shows the manifold is not from Wagner, it's from 034.

[bernsaudi]

My better half is a copyright lawyer, and she says......
If the copies have his logo on its piracy and is criminal.
If they dont have his logo on they're in breach of copyright and this is a civil case.

Carsten, I hope you understand that you have a group of people here that will always go for your products over any other,unfortunately this doesn't stop people wanting to improve thier cars without having to pay all the money.

Even some of the biggest companies dont chase copies, instead using thier resources to better products or introduce new concepts. If you can chase them, I am sure people on this forum that can be proposed as specialists would happily give thier references to help you in your attempt to bring them to justice..

I will also be buying from you in the future, so please don't shut your shop.....I don't like spending money but will happily part with my cash for your superior products.

All the best

[Skaala]

Just found this thread, and I dont want to take sides since I dont know any of the companies very well, nor have yet used any of their products. But I want to share some info from my own experience regarding this issue...

I work for company that has had its own fully owned factory in China for 10 years now. We just had a massive 10 year anniversary party in China this summer. We produce for the worldwide offshore and ship market and average turnover on this factory alone is close to £30million. Operating, producing or purchasing parts or complete products from China is fairly new to most western companies. China was closed until the early 80s and western companies didnt really start to establish until the mid 90s. Due to chairman mao's cultural revoltion where they killed off most educated people, the court system in china is still fairly unexperienced, making copyright rules diffuse to say the least.

We had an incident many years ago where a competitor broke in to our factory at night and stole several moulds, casting equipment, company "secrets" etc. They were caught the same week redhanded and reported to the Police. So......what happens next? They open a new factory 200m from ours, producing the same pruducts, they have a grand opening with a massive banner with pictures from our website. They went on to sell really well due to cheaper raw materials, used low quality parts, no quality control and no properly trained staff. 7 years later we finally won in the chinese court system, where the company who stole from us were sentenced to destroy all moulds and other manufacturing plugs with our design. A small fine was also involved. All their accounts were of course emptied the day before final day in court, and the moulds etc dissapeared. We have heard they may have surfaced in Korea somewhere under a different name. How much do you think 7 years in court cost?

So...what have we learned from our 10 years in China.

1. Copyright regulations does not really apply there as long as the name and small changes are made to the product or design.
2. Should you be surprised if a chinese supplier sells your design to a competitor? NO!
3. Should you be surprised if a chinese supplier sells your product to a competitor, even a competitor in your country? NO.
4. Do you need chinese staff emplyeed by you, working in china? YES!
5. Do you need a lot of staff from your company's HQ to stay in China at all times? YES!
6. Can you as a purchaser be confident that the part or product you are buying is not originally designed and developed by someone else? No. Not unless you do very very thorough research on site in china.


How can you avoid copying or buying copies? It is very, very, very difficult. We can still see alot of our engineering in several chinese competitors. Luckily they do not always understand why certain things are designed in such a way, and choose to skip it, resulting in a s#it product. Frequent and unscheduled audits of your supplier is always a cheap insurance against them selling to others, make sure that you have very specific and detailed confidentiality agreements with the company you are dealing with, including staff. Get all products certified....I guess for german car parts this would be TÜV? We use german BG-Verkehr and have frequent audits to re-certify all parts and products. Will your chinese competitor do this? Maybe, but doubtful. Ordering parts from a chinese supplier is cheap yes, but you need to protect your designs and products in a whole new way. It is not easy, and many westeners have gone bust or close to, due to expansion into china.

I could go on for pages on this, but I'll try to be short. I know the size of the companies mentioned in this thread may be a lot different to us in size, product area, customers, suppliers, etc etc, but I still think what I mentioned will be valid anyway. Look at Rolls-Royce and Geely fighting in chinese courts over a Phantom copy. (Geely is chinas biggest car company and famous for making shameless copies of other cars, and they now own Volvo)


for us....our constant high quality and good designs, in the end, has always been more successful over fake ones. But we are always aware that the fake ones are getting better as well. Solution? Keep up R&D and sourcing of high quality materials and parts.


If anyone wants some more pointers about business in china, they can send me a pm and well exhange info from there.


hope you sort everything out

cheers
Thomas

[Jamo]

A reminder post to all

[prj]

Just wanted to mention.
If the copies that are floating around are anything like the one I've seen, then Carsten really does not need to lose any sleep over this.





I think no more comments are needed.
If you want a cheap manifold, buy a RS2 copy or STR. Otherwise stick to the original by Carsten. Saving 300 EUR is not worth a blown turbo, not to mention it'll perform worse than a RS2 replica.

[Jamo]

Did this ever get resolved?