Copyrights specifically do not apply to color combinations. So long as the folks in China producing PBT for the masses not the classes don’t copy trademarked logos and the like, they are operating within the law.
This is not like counterfeiting where you order sneakers being sold as Nikes and Amazon ends up sending you cheap counterfeits. These aren’t being sold as GMK sets.
It is like buying sneakers at Walmart that deliberately look like latest Nikes, same colors, shape, and similar materials, but don’t have the swoosh on the side.
They are exactly what they advertise themselves to be, cheap, PBT versions of popular color ways.
I’m not sure if I totally understand where you’re coming from @rpiguy9907. I personally have no issue with fakes of products from massive corperations like nike and designer fashion brands, and the more general copying of design and iterating upon them IS what brings expensive products into an accessible price point over time.
However, to further @iaman’s point. all GMK designers, even Zombumon and others, are not massive corperations, and although it may not be an outright crime to copy their designs, I personally find it pretty inexcusable, especially in the case of GMK Retrocast, which isn’t even out yet and already being ripped
This becomes a real problem for the community at the point when everyone knows you can get basically any popular GMK set for GB half price in PBT off the chinese market places, which can have real impact on demand for the product, instead of people saving up to buy the one GMK set that really excites them that year, they might buy a couple bad PBT knockoffs instead.
Sure. At no point did I say that they were operating illegally; the law is a net that is intended to guarantee a sort of minimum acceptable behavior, and we can always implement cultural guidelines or norms that go above and beyond that.
In this particular case, I think we should do exactly that and explained where my personal line was on things, which obviously goes beyond what any particular law requires.
The huge difference between stuff like Nike/designer fashion brands and this case, which I think is key, is that in the former case 99% of the time the people doing the work got paid to do the work already, usually via contract or salary, and will see no benefit from additional sales whereas in the latter case the people doing the work only actually get paid if the mechanism for doing that isn’t sabotaged by actors like these.
Novelties (which are protected by IP law afaik) and all! It’s pretty egregious and disheartening tbh, I’d have less of an issue (not none, but less) with these knockoffs if they were just ripping off the color schemes.
Yeah I have no issue with using similar colorways on some nice PBT keycaps being accessible and affordable! Part of the reason I started buying GMK sets was because there were no keycap sets on the market that werent shine through or gamery or came in awful colorways. its just when they literally call the listing by the name of the set and/or include the novelties that its going too far.
Part of the problem is underserving the low end market. If a designer doesn’t want to make low cost stuff, that’s cool, but someone is going to fill that void. I don’t agree with copying artwork like novelties etc, but it’s going to happen. The designer could work with manufactures to produce low cost versions of their designs or let the copy cats come in and do it. Either way that void is gonna be filled. If I were going for a GMK set there is no way I’d ever consider a knock off because it’s not even going to be close, but some consumers don’t give a shit about it being GMK, they just want something.
Yes, that is exactly what is happening at the moment.
Beeing a vape enthousiast (I’m addicted to nicotine), I have seen a similar trend in the vaping community years ago.
Some high end stuff were systematically cloned by chinese companies and the situation was exactly what is happening right now in the keyboard community with high end keyboards and keycaps that are very difficult to find.
What happened is that several of these clone manufacturers started to make original products, very well designed and affordable.
People now have the possibility to buy good products at low price.
On the other side it didn’t killed the high end segment, there are always people that want something special and ready to pay 4x to 6x times the price of the China made product, but made in other countries like in Europe and the US.
As an example I’m a proud owner of beautiful vape stuff made in Greece and have others made in China.
For the Greek case I treat it with great care like a collectible while for the Chinese case it is more a commodity/utility thing, both have very different purposes.
I hope in the future the keyboard community will self regulate in this way.
I also agree on this part, and I especially feel it on the custom keyboards area, where I see great inovative stuff being released at a lower and lower cost. Also I see a point in nice colorway cheap keycaps (but not clones or even worse pretend it’s the same product), as many of keyboard fans start with low psychological budgets for theyr first builds. If I would ask myself 3 years ago if I would spend >1000 units of money on a keyboard that sits on my table and practically performs close as a 200 units one, I would have said " No way ".
I think counterfeits will always been prevalent if there is no reasonable alternative. For example, I imagine demand for counterfeits would vanish if all past GMK or SP sets were available for preorder. Designers get their cut, everyone has relative access, mostly win-win for consumers and designers. I think there is no incentive to move to any such model because the lack of available themselves create massive hype. “Join this group buy now or risk paying x4 more in 6-12 months!”.
What if designers also sold a low to mid end set of each GMK set they made in PBT? Would designers then be able to take legal action against counterfeits?
Would be an interesting experiment to see if the community could sustain both the GMK and lower-end demand from a designer without too much cannibalization.
I could actually see some people buying both of sets they really like. PBT to use, and GMK to display.
The downside is then there would actually be counterfeits that could be almost indistinguishable from the actual PBT set made by the designer.
Maybe, it’s hard to say. I think it would be harder to counterfeit if the designer was already providing something at that cost level. There Will always be people who want the highest quality available but if designers also offered a correct color matched $40 set then who would buy the $40 knockoff that looks like shit? I dunno, I could be way off, but it seems to me like there is an underserved market for people looking to spend less than the cost of their board for keycaps. Let that sink in. The high end keycaps we buy can easily exceed the cost of the keyboard. That is kinda fucked up.
‘Midnight’ 
