ecking
Veteran
Unfortunately this seems to be the case will all film gear, ever. Most things we buy are pretty much pre-existing things with slight mods to tailor them towards shooting, I've seen that in the film industry more than anywhere else.
indian followfocus gets updated
- Thread starter thekreative
- Start date
Unfortunately this seems to be the case will all film gear, ever. Most things we buy are pretty much pre-existing things with slight mods to tailor them towards shooting, I've seen that in the film industry more than anywhere else.
JohnLeeFilms
Active member
Maybe because film guys do it all as DIY projects first more than anywhere else.
ripping off designs
ripping off designs
Wow. Thank you so much for this great thread. It's nice to hear that people are interested in preserving ones designs.
I would never steal anyone’s design that’s extremely unethical and not cool. I contacted this Indian company and informed them of our situations with Patents and they promised me that they would cease producing or selling their Magic Arm and other stolen Zacuto designed products. They are ripping off our designs and do not have permission to make these products. But a bigger issue to us is that we are certified, Made in the USA, and I would not want to present any confusion with that with these Indian Illegally made products.
Astigmatic brought up some interesting points about articulating arms and Noga. There is a real big different in design and use between a Zamerican arm and a Noga arm. The Zamerican arm is nothing like a Noga arm, which has a patent on it. And I respect that. Noga has an excellent product and I know the owners of the company, have spoke to them and respect them and their products. But it’s really about purpose. A Zamerican arm is a quick-release arm (the first). It is meant to be able to quickly remove items on either end of the arm, using mounts like the Zicro, Z-Mount and more. Jens, my co-designer refers to it as a articulating rod and it really is, you can even put rod extensions on either end of the arm and make it any length you want. It is strictly made for filmmaking applications. The Noga arm is a screw type arm that was originally designed for use in Machine Shops to hold items in place while they are being machined. Strangely enough, our machine shops use Noga’s in the manufacture of Zamerican’s. But let’s diverge into a crazy Israeli-American arms race
Noga has patents to protect itself in that market and I will not try to compete with him. Also my arm systems could be twice the cost with all of the connecting components and this again keeps me from competing with Noga. Finally, the design of our handle gives you much more thrusting power to tighten the arm for much heavier loads then Noga was designed for. This is necessary with large and heavy monitors. Plus we have eliminated a lot of the steel components in our arms to prevent rusting and lighten the weight. They really are two different products with two different purposes. That’s one of most important criteria for Zacuto creating products. We will not make products just to compete with others. We need to change the playing field with a different way of doing things or we won’t bother.
Now the situation that Astigmatic talked about with the Petroff follow focus. Robert Petroff and I are good friends and he is an excellent engineer. One of the best in this industry. For a long time we were the only company in the USA selling his high-end follow focus unit. We wanted to design our own line of follow focuses and I didn’t want to compete with Robert. I talked to Robert about designing a follow focus gear box for Zacuto. I think that Roberts 35 years of follow focus engineering experience made him a better choice for engineering a Zacuto FF then our own engineer. But experience won out and no feelings were hurt. On the other hand when it comes to quick-release and mounting no one can compare to our engineer, Bob. Rather then create a new FF gear box, Robert decided to sell us entire right and title to the follow focus crank mechanism for the USA market. That precludes Robert from selling or distributing his version of that follow focus under his name. So it’s gear box by Robert, mount system by Bob. We were in love with Robert’s high-end FF from day one, that’s why we sold it for so long, so in the end, it worked out great for everyone.
Thanks once again for realizing that it’s morally, ethically and legally important to respect ones designs and patents. You guys rock!
ripping off designs
Wow. Thank you so much for this great thread. It's nice to hear that people are interested in preserving ones designs.
I would never steal anyone’s design that’s extremely unethical and not cool. I contacted this Indian company and informed them of our situations with Patents and they promised me that they would cease producing or selling their Magic Arm and other stolen Zacuto designed products. They are ripping off our designs and do not have permission to make these products. But a bigger issue to us is that we are certified, Made in the USA, and I would not want to present any confusion with that with these Indian Illegally made products.
Astigmatic brought up some interesting points about articulating arms and Noga. There is a real big different in design and use between a Zamerican arm and a Noga arm. The Zamerican arm is nothing like a Noga arm, which has a patent on it. And I respect that. Noga has an excellent product and I know the owners of the company, have spoke to them and respect them and their products. But it’s really about purpose. A Zamerican arm is a quick-release arm (the first). It is meant to be able to quickly remove items on either end of the arm, using mounts like the Zicro, Z-Mount and more. Jens, my co-designer refers to it as a articulating rod and it really is, you can even put rod extensions on either end of the arm and make it any length you want. It is strictly made for filmmaking applications. The Noga arm is a screw type arm that was originally designed for use in Machine Shops to hold items in place while they are being machined. Strangely enough, our machine shops use Noga’s in the manufacture of Zamerican’s. But let’s diverge into a crazy Israeli-American arms race
Noga has patents to protect itself in that market and I will not try to compete with him. Also my arm systems could be twice the cost with all of the connecting components and this again keeps me from competing with Noga. Finally, the design of our handle gives you much more thrusting power to tighten the arm for much heavier loads then Noga was designed for. This is necessary with large and heavy monitors. Plus we have eliminated a lot of the steel components in our arms to prevent rusting and lighten the weight. They really are two different products with two different purposes. That’s one of most important criteria for Zacuto creating products. We will not make products just to compete with others. We need to change the playing field with a different way of doing things or we won’t bother.Now the situation that Astigmatic talked about with the Petroff follow focus. Robert Petroff and I are good friends and he is an excellent engineer. One of the best in this industry. For a long time we were the only company in the USA selling his high-end follow focus unit. We wanted to design our own line of follow focuses and I didn’t want to compete with Robert. I talked to Robert about designing a follow focus gear box for Zacuto. I think that Roberts 35 years of follow focus engineering experience made him a better choice for engineering a Zacuto FF then our own engineer. But experience won out and no feelings were hurt. On the other hand when it comes to quick-release and mounting no one can compare to our engineer, Bob. Rather then create a new FF gear box, Robert decided to sell us entire right and title to the follow focus crank mechanism for the USA market. That precludes Robert from selling or distributing his version of that follow focus under his name. So it’s gear box by Robert, mount system by Bob. We were in love with Robert’s high-end FF from day one, that’s why we sold it for so long, so in the end, it worked out great for everyone.
Thanks once again for realizing that it’s morally, ethically and legally important to respect ones designs and patents. You guys rock!
Once we wanted to patent and protect our Cinedof vibrating GG assembly and our patent manager told us that if we wanted to protect our product worldwide it would have taken several months and several hundred thousand Euros per annum. Because you can not register or protect your products with one act all over the world and doing it for all the countries would have been a really pricy venture.
If you protect your investment with US patent or copyright you must register in also in India or whatever country that you see as potential threat. Inside Europe you must protect it in every god damn country where the protection will be accepted and so on and so on...
... now if I wanted to copy someones stuff protected in the US I can steal it actually an sell and produce it legally here in Estonia if it is not protected here by local legal acts/patents. Sure exporting those "copies" back to US would be illegal but if a reseller sells those in an online shop customers can buy those all over the world as customs offices will not check for patent infrigement on importing for small wolume non-branded items.
So you know why we went "open source" - worldwide protection killed it business wise.
T
If you protect your investment with US patent or copyright you must register in also in India or whatever country that you see as potential threat. Inside Europe you must protect it in every god damn country where the protection will be accepted and so on and so on...
... now if I wanted to copy someones stuff protected in the US I can steal it actually an sell and produce it legally here in Estonia if it is not protected here by local legal acts/patents. Sure exporting those "copies" back to US would be illegal but if a reseller sells those in an online shop customers can buy those all over the world as customs offices will not check for patent infrigement on importing for small wolume non-branded items.
So you know why we went "open source" - worldwide protection killed it business wise.
T