Things that make us go... hmmm šŸ¤”

Keycult Summer sale. You can fight the mobs in a FCFS sale to buy 2-3 year old B-stock keyboards for $700…

1 Like

If i had the money for one and wanted a keycult i think id rather just pay the commission price and get one that I want from them instead of dealing with that lol

1 Like

Keycult is overrated af. Their boards are pretty mid IMO, design- and sound-wise. They’re just overhyped because of all those commissions celebrities have done.

8 Likes

I received my silent icebergs and put them in a hotswap board today. These definitely make it in the top 3 of my good silent linears. Very nice feeling silent switch.

Silent switches I’ve tried and liked (top to bottom ranked)

  1. Cherry silent stem in Zealio housing
  2. (2 way tie) Kailh Deep Sea V3 | Iceberg Silent Silver
  3. Kailh Midnight Silent (both linear and Tactile versions)

Silent switches I don’t like:
Gateron silent yellow, Cherry (red and black), Zilent, Aqua Zilent, Gazzew linear silent, Serikos (JWK silent), tacit switches, some others I can’t remember but I’ve tried a lot :upside_down_face:

Most silent switches feel terribly mushy or have a lot of excess noise from housings or the contact leaf.

If these Iceberg had full 4.0mm travel and a slightly heavier spring, they would be the perfect silent switch for me.

4 Likes

I ordered a set as well, the salmon-pink tactile ones.

Have you tried TTC’s more recent silents? I’ve been pretty impressed with those as far as not feeling mushy or noisy. They have a louder thud than many, but it’s pretty clean.

So far I’ve tried Silent Bluish White tactiles, Frozen Silent linears, and Silent Red V3s (I think it’s v3, anyway) - all of these have the shrouded stem. The Frozens have clear stems that need PTFE tape to grip most caps, and the Reds are kind of the opposite, fitting really tight. The Bluish whites seem normal.

2 Likes

I still haven’t tried the bluish whites. As long as they don’t need films I’m down to try them.

This.
I, too, find that claiming a colorway is ridiculous. It’s like the Deutsche Telekom suing companies that use the color Magenta in their logos.

5 Likes

Now I’m imagining Ikea and Best Buy fighting over GMK Nautilus…

3 Likes

My goal for my first keycap set that I produce will be to make completely new colors and then copyright them.
Everyone is going to be blown away by the tealurpleā„¢ & blreenā„¢ colorway. you’ve seriously never seen anything like it

1 Like

I mean, it’s a fun joke I guess but trademarking of colors has really clear and well-tested ā€œsame industryā€ limitations that really only make it apply to somebody attempting to do something in the same niche as the trademark holder.

People are pretty well able to use Tiffany Blue in an enormous number of contexts, just not in offering competing products.

Does anybody have an actual example of somebody in this space enforcing color trademarks/their ownership of a colorway that has stopped something interesting and actually distinct from being made, or are folks just getting riled up in the mostly-hypothetical zone/upset that designers don’t like when their work gets legitimately copied without even a credit let alone a kickback?

I seem to recall MiTo trying to claim ownership of the teal from Pulse, and Signature Plastics refusing to honor it.

Sounds to me like MiTo misunderstood IP law and was corrected by folks who understood it. The specific combination of colors for Pulse might be protectable but I don’t think the specific teal would be; MiTo would have had to go through a lot of trouble ahead of time to do that.

Anybody involved in bringing a product to market should definitely work with an IP lawyer (ideally vendors/GB sponsors would be able to help facilitate this), just as a kind of general practice. There’s so many things that can go wrong without one.

EDIT: To be clearer on the latter point: I don’t just mean people working on new sets or whatever, I also mean that designers should talk to IP lawyers before making statements about who owns what and what rights people have. Some folks in the space have, but I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that some have not and are just bullying.

I think there is a big difference in a color specifically created and trademarked pertaining to a logo and/or corporate identity and a color used on a nonspecific product that is openly available to be created by different brands. I would use guitars as an example of color palettes being used by numerous vendors without issue. Different vendors can even use the same instrument body shapes of very specific guitars without fear of lawsuit. A instrument maker can be sued for using a direct copy of a guitar headstock because that is the part of the guitar that is considered part of the corporate identity. If GMK came out with a MT3 profile than there would be issues.

Coincidently T-Mobile magenta is trademarked so maybe Deutsche Telekom would have issues in that regard.

Indeed. I remember this from something that happened in Knoxville while I was attending the University of Tennessee (famous for its orange and white football uniforms).

A local headshop near the school had started selling orange and white glass pipes, and UT sued claiming ownership over the colorway, saying their intellectual property had been infringed upon.

The judge pointed out that a.) UT isn’t in the business of selling weed pipes and b.) said weed pipes may indeed be orange and white, but do not even reference any of UT’s protected branding. The judge had to remind UT that they only own Pantone 131 + White under very specific conditions, and then threw out the case for lack of standing.

4 Likes

For sure! I brought up color trademarking because it’s what the thing designers are, I guess?, doing is being compared to and idk that the comparison quite holds up.

My guess is they only would if they were attempting to do business in the same area.

1 Like

The upcoming Smith+Rune raffle is for a $600 polycarbonate case…

1 Like

Ok, sure. Why not, right? It’s just I don’t think you’ll ever see it. Maybe through acrylic, maybe.

https://kbdfans.com/collections/tape-mod-customization

4 Likes

I think it is for their polycarbonate version of the keyboard.

1 Like

Uh-huh. That’s pretty cool then. Lol.

1 Like

Someone ripped off my idea and used it for the name of their gb/store/discord/ig :joy:

9 Likes