Not really, plus you are running up a very slippery slope there as the people who buy these Chinese crap boats are our potential customers. You don’t really want to go after people who might want to buy from you some day. All we (Derrick) can hope for is that once the people running these machines realize they fail after 2 years, the 20K for the first one, plus the 20K for a second + 5 days missed drilling just cost them XXX,XXX.
Legally I believe they can go after any company who has US ties, but most companies who buy these rigs will be China/Russian based anyways. All we can really do is hope their sales team sucks and these stay local.
I think offshore rigs cost a company something like 250,000-300,000 a day when they are not operating.
All we can do is stay enginuitive and keep our quality standards above all overs. We also provide our customers with product support as well as engineering support for free pretty much.
See you would be correct if this was being produced by a company with a USA, Euro affiliations whom carried laws protecting patent infringement.
This machine is 100% legal to produce in China. Does it suck…yes. Is it a cheap shot… yes. Is it legal, unfortunately yes.
Don’t worry Christian at least they don’t paint it the same color. :picard:
Is this the same place we found using actual pictures of our equipment on their website, claiming them as theirs?
My buddy works for his family’s custom automation company. He says this happens to him a lot. He does a lot of trade shows and there are always chinese coming to his booths taking pictures of his machines and actually asking for plans and stuff. They are constantly trying to steal information from him and he actually caught one guy behind his booth once trying to take apart a machine to take more pictures.
The good news is it’s almost guaranteed to be an unreliable piece of shit. I assume you’re not going after the low cost market so it’ll probably take a bite out of your sales but not present too strong of competition.
On a personal level I’ll punch China in the dick for you the next time I see them.
Their mentality generally is to take a piece of equipment, copy it, them make it as cheap as possible.
The only design changes this machine has seen where probably to use less material, and/or to allow for cheaper (often more manual) assembly.
As previously stated they do not need to last at this price really. They will sell them because many rig operates only think in numbers, and get bonuses when they come in under budget on a build.
They then take the replacement costs and plum the additional cost in the maintenance funds to look like good guys.
It is all a game, who has the best sales men (and gimmicks) to convince people to buy their stuff.
I see less and less people basing decisions on overall quality, price, maintenance, etc.
Some rig hands base who they buy stuff from on how many pens, key chains, and BBQ’s the company provides them with. :picard: That is why we have 3 BBQ trailers here.
It sucks that the world is essentially becoming more and more dumb.
My old man had a company that made electrical tools. They came up with a tester that plugged into an outlet and did all kinds of cool stuff. Of course the chineese copied it for 1/4 the cost, they had no recourse. Ideal came in and wanted to buy the product/patent from my dad and he worked out a deal to sell the whole company to ideal. Part of the reason he says was that the chinese copy had the potential to put them out of business.
ughh, i do NOT miss building those. however this does suck. We deal with the same shit at cameron but not on such a level. We sold a msg25 compressor to the chinese and there “engineers” tried to take out one of the inlets and it fell out and crushed killed both of them. Maybe next time they will contact the company that built the machine. But i guess in china even the people are cheep and disposable.
Speaking of Chinese crap blah blah blah. I just received an order form a customer that we lost to China a couple years ago. This is a huge order(not by Derrick standards but…). The Chinese units are failing in less than 6 months, our parts have been in the field for more than 2 years and we have had ZERO failure. This is great BUT, it kills small companies like mine. I have another large customer that just came back too. Thank God we didn’t go out of business in the mean time.
Edit: It is cheaper to buy Chinese crap until the units are literally all over the world and they need to be replaced (for free).
I know that for everything we design my company files various international patents to attempt to avoid these issues, which thankfully haven’t occurred yet.
that said, a chinese company that was looking to possibly buy the company a few years back did try to get us to send them a unit for free (probably to reverse engineer and steal) which we did not provide for them.
but they are a shady bunch when it comes to this type of stuff, I really feel for you man
We have filed chinese patents in the past, it does nothing. For example the corrugated screen that’s shown in their picture has a Chinese patent on it, but there’s really nothing we can do.
I am very close with a VERY good IP lawyer who has pretty much assured me that the Chinese can (and will) copy and sell anything they want, regardless of patents.
however this does suck. We deal with the same shit at cameron but not on such a level. We sold a msg25 compressor to the chinese and there “engineers” tried to take out one of the inlets and it fell out and crushed killed both of them. Maybe next time they will contact the company that built the machine. But i guess in china even the people are cheep and disposable.