Thermaltake, you have been ousted!!!

spoffle said:
Oh wow haha. Well that's broken, no denying that. I think people are jumping on the bandwagon with the other stuff though,
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Watch the Tiny Tom vid linked further up and jump to the 13 minute mark.

It's fair enough about some of the images of GPU blocks, there's not really much going on to say they're a direct copy, but that one in the video is something else.
 
spoffle said:
Oh wow haha. Well that's broken, no denying that. I think people are jumping on the bandwagon with the other stuff though,
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Some of their cases are also blatantly copies of Sharkoon and some of their storage devices are obviously based heavily off Sharkoon, Icy Box, etc. with some minor cosmetic differences - on their own nothing very remarkable but when a large part of their product range is so closely matching pre-existing products by other companies it starts to get a bit silly and sucks for some of the smaller companies putting a lot of effort into their own products and then having a larger company rip it off.
 
As a qualified product designer (ie I'm fully able to design cases and accessories from scratch) the fan, fan controller and water cooling, aren't really a straight up copy, there's only so many ways you can do those types of things and there's going to be an element of similarity. To me this isn't a major issue.

The caselabs rip offs on the other hand literally look like they've just stuck a sticker on a caselabs case. This is an issue although I do wonder why caselabs haven't gone about things via a legal approach, it's clearly a 'design' which they could have registered in the same way apple have with things like the iPhone and iPad. Maybe it's down to a similarity with lian li cases?

I also thought that first image of the tt f51 was a lian li, it's very very similar to their design aesthetic, more so than the fractal in my opinion, from the outside.

The thing is and this is where it sometimes gets a little grey, some companies actually sell 'variations' of someone elses designs under their branding. Silverstone for example sell some external hard drives cases (multi drive ones) which are from another company but use their own branding on it. So without knowing all the details some of the items might actually be 'ok' to be sold under tt branding.
 
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lsg1r said:
The thing is and this is where it sometimes gets a little grey, some companies actually sell 'variations' of someone elses designs under their branding. Silverstone for example sell some external hard drives cases (multi drive ones) which are from another company but use their own branding on it. So without knowing all the details some of the items might actually be 'ok' to be sold under tt branding.
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That was something I did wonder about i.e. OCZ used to (under license) resell several other companies designs with some very minor tweaks and their own product label on it.
 
lsg1r said:
As a qualified product designer (ie I'm fully able to design cases and accessories from scratch) the fan, fan controller and water cooling, aren't really a straight up copy, there's only so many ways you can do those types of things and there's going to be an element of similarity. To me this isn't a major issue.

The caselabs rip offs on the other hand literally look like they've just stuck a sticker on a caselabs case. This is an issue although I do wonder why caselabs haven't gone about things via a legal approach, it's clearly a 'design' which they could have registered in the same way apple have with things like the iPhone and iPad.

I also thought that first image of the tt f51 was a lian li, it's very very similar to their design aesthetic, more so than the fractal in my opinion, from the outside.

The thing is and this is where it sometimes gets a little grey, some companies actually sell 'variations' of someone elses designs under their branding. Silverstone for example sell some external hard drives cases (multi drive ones) which are from another company but use their own branding on it. So without knowing all the details some of the items might actually be 'ok' to be sold under tt branding.
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I agree with all this. OEM stuff is pretty prevalent. A lot of people don't realise just how prevalent it is. For example, there's only a handful of companies making computer centric raditators, and various companies make D5 and DDC based pumps.

Hazro and DGM monitors seem to be OEMs from other companies, too. As you can get the same monitors in the same chassis from Korea, under a different brand.
 
spoffle said:
I agree with all this. OEM stuff is pretty prevalent. A lot of people don't realise just how prevalent it is. For example, there's only a handful of companies making computer centric raditators, and various companies make D5 and DDC based pumps.

Hazro and DGM monitors seem to be OEMs from other companies, too. As you can get the same monitors in the same chassis from Korea, under a different brand.
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i thought it was mainly PSU's, SSD's and RAM had no idea it went to cases as well... the more you know.
 
I Don't Know said:
i thought it was mainly PSU's, SSD's and RAM had no idea it went to cases as well... the more you know.
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Oh, I'm not saying cases are, though it wouldn't surprise me. It's just a lot of company's products are OEM. It happens with all sorts. TVs, monitors, speakers. Pretty much everything to some degree.

Some car companies share common parts in cars. Like some small hatchbatcks from completely different companies will share the same chassis/frame and just have differing interiors and body work.

Based on what Jokester said, it does actually sound like they've copied Caselabs directly.
 
i new about TVs, monitors, speakers and cars

not many companies can afford to set up massive factories.

still if Tt are willing to copy caselabs, then i'm worried about parvum systems :S
 
Well cases are very much not made by the brands you know.

For example fractal cases and bitfenix cases are both made by the same factory. The brands gets the manufacturing factory's to produce for them.

http://www.haixu-case.com/en/products.asp?classid=1&typeid=16

This the factory who build for them both of course the retail names you know own the rights to the designs etc.
 
I understand nobody wants to be copied, but frankly the Caselabs VP posting on social media just sounded like a big whinging child. Nothing about Caselabs stuff is original, and I'd say it would be difficult to tell the difference between Caselabs, Mountain Mods and top-end Lian Li if you didn't know what you're looking at.

Why don't Caselabs just wheel out their patent portfolio and sue Tt for copying? Oh wait they can't, because Caselabs don't actually have anything original or innovative, just a good dose of forethought and great build quality.
 
Oh and I'd just put that OC3d video in the bin. With 2 exceptions everything they list is just grasping at straws because TTL (and the OC3D culture by extension I should imagine) just have an axe to grind with Tt.
 
LePhuronn there are legal methods they can use other than patents, theres a term called trade dress (more frequent in US, where Caselabs are based, than UK admittedly) that refers to the way a product is aesthetically designed which could easily be applied here in the same way Apple went after Samsung.

But like I said earlier I don't know why Caselabs have not gone down a legal route regarding this.
 
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