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What the Seven Towns Copyright Covers

ItsMeColby

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The copyright says even if it is identical it is a copyright. 1st Speedcubes are adressed as magic cubes. If a stranger picked up a Storebought and a Dayan Zhanchi for an example they could see the differences I have personally tried this at my school. I brought in a Black Zhanchi with Dayan stickers. The first thing someone said is that looks different. They said not a Rubiks cube. It is like the creator of a flat screen TV there are literally millions of flat screen designs but there is no copyright. If they want to copyright a colour scheme they can't copyright all of the blues,yellows,whites,and reds. Like cherry red o light blue not the same colour as a Rubiks brand. The rubiks cube is a magic cube that is for non speed solvers Dayan does not target Walmart or General cubes they go for speed cubers.
 

Cuber9991

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Just guessing. Maybe Rubik's knows that they will lose if they try to sue V-Cubes. Rubik's say they are losing sales to the bigger companies. Maybe They are losing more money than we think. V-Cubes may have more money than Rubik's at the moment. If you think about it, How many people buy Rubik's brand cubes (general public and speedcubers). A majority of the people either already have a cube or aren't interested in buying one. V-Cubes however sells cubes to speedcubers on a regular basis. Many people prefer the V-Cube 5 over the SS 5x5. Also, the V-Cube 4 came out recently, within the last year. Many speedcubers want the cube to test out. This is all just a guess, I don't want anyone calling me stupid or anything because of my answer. To end this I would like to say, Go to h*** Rubik's.
 

cyoubx

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Just guessing. Maybe Rubik's knows that they will lose if they try to sue V-Cubes. Rubik's say they are losing sales to the bigger companies. Maybe They are losing more money than we think. V-Cubes may have more money than Rubik's at the moment.

I'm willing to bet a large sum of money that that is false.
 

BaMiao

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Why doesn't Seven Towns/Rubik's just make better cubes so they can actually make some money?

Right now, they don't have to. People who buy Rubik's brands are mostly people who don't know of any alternatives. The game they are trying to play is to limit the exposure of other brands so they can keep things the way they are.
 

sneaklyfox

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If you think about it, How many people buy Rubik's brand cubes (general public and speedcubers). A majority of the people either already have a cube or aren't interested in buying one.

This. If your family/house has one, that's enough. If you seriously get interested in the thing, you go the speedcube way. You wouldn't buy another Rubik's brand. Plus, Rubik's brand cubes are rather sturdy. I'm sure there are people who have cubes from 1981 in their family. So it wouldn't be strange for them to be making less money now than when cubes were the hype of the decade.
 

Cuber9991

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This. If your family/house has one, that's enough. If you seriously get interested in the thing, you go the speedcube way. You wouldn't buy another Rubik's brand. Plus, Rubik's brand cubes are rather sturdy. I'm sure there are people who have cubes from 1981 in their family. So it wouldn't be strange for them to be making less money now than when cubes were the hype of the decade.

I'm confused, are you agreeing or disagreeing with me? lol
 

Rnewms

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This. If your family/house has one, that's enough. If you seriously get interested in the thing, you go the speedcube way. You wouldn't buy another Rubik's brand. Plus, Rubik's brand cubes are rather sturdy. I'm sure there are people who have cubes from 1981 in their family. So it wouldn't be strange for them to be making less money now than when cubes were the hype of the decade.

Most people get cubes for Christmas or some other holiday and they will almost always be Rubik's brand. I highly doubt very many families own a cube from 1981, especially a young, developing family that would like to get a puzzle for their child's stocking. They have plenty of buyers; they have decreased since the 80s, but they certainly don't have a problem with sales/profits.
 

sneaklyfox

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Most people get cubes for Christmas or some other holiday and they will almost always be Rubik's brand. I highly doubt very many families own a cube from 1981, especially a young, developing family that would like to get a puzzle for their child's stocking. They have plenty of buyers; they have decreased since the 80s, but they certainly don't have a problem with sales/profits.

I didn't say there are many families with 1981 cubes. My point is just that if a family owns one and nobody is that serious about it, one cube is enough and sometimes it gets passed down. Yes, of course Rubik's brand cubes are still being bought but when there are already so many out there from before, there isn't so much need to buy a new one now.
 

AvGalen

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For most people Rubik's cubes are actually better than speedcubes because Rubik's cubes don't POP!
Just think how many normal people would complain if they had bought a speedcube and break it with every 10th wristturn.

Rubik's understands this so they made 2 types of cubes: "Storebought" and "DIY".
Most people here seem to think that Rubik's is interested in preventing DIY-alternatives but that is not the case. They are trying to prevent brand-infringment and "storebought" copies.
 

BrainOfSweden

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This. If your family/house has one, that's enough. If you seriously get interested in the thing, you go the speedcube way. You wouldn't buy another Rubik's brand. Plus, Rubik's brand cubes are rather sturdy. I'm sure there are people who have cubes from 1981 in their family. So it wouldn't be strange for them to be making less money now than when cubes were the hype of the decade.

Yup. We still have an old Rubiks brand, likely from the 80's and it's a sturdy beast. Sure it turns quite awful now, but it still works, compared to my Rubiks brand from two years ago, I dropped it maybe twice, and the core is now broken. So I get your point, they don't sell as many cubes as we may think, but by eliminating the competition they maximize income. Kinda like a certain fruit company, although I'd say V-Cube is more Apple-ish, their cubes are both inferior and expensive as ****
 

Eric79

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[...] where's the problem then? [...]
The problem is that Seven Towns doesn't do a lot on their own, regarding private consumers who order few cubes, they'd probably do nothing at all but let them have the cubes.
But as stated Seven Towns employs legal companies all around the world to do the job. And if a customs officer opens a package (or even containers), finds cubes inside and knows about the copyright (or cares about finding out if there is a copyright problem - which he should do if he does his job as meant to be), then they forward the issue to the legal company who is responsible in that country. These lawyers then have to spent time answering the requests by the customs office - and time is money. So those legal companies aren't like "Screw it, it's only 3 cubes, forward them to the customer... and present compliments!" of course they want to make money out of every possibility and that eventually is causing the problems some of us had/will have (eventually caused by yourself by importing illegal things).

Someone else before asked why they would go after us, not the producers of those copyright infringing cubes? Well, for those who are not familiar with chinese knock-off practices: Some of the manufacturers of "Magic Cubes" (or whatever else, e.g. Shoes, T-Shirts, Tablet-PCs, ...you name it) are probably aware of the fact that they are producing illegal items but simply don't care for the benefit of quickly earned money. Others probably simply ignore existing copyrights because they have their own "patent" and think they are right... A "patent" only valid in the country where it was granted - in this case usually a asian country, where you often (unfortunately?) can buy anything from authorities anyway if you bring enough money; and patents that are useless as long as the finished product still infringes other copyrights. And lastly some producers really may be not aware of the fact that there are copyrights for something like a Rubiks Cube.
So, say Seven Town employs a local lawyer to go after a specific KO-company: This lawyer then is going to inspect that facility, bringing some customs officials and policemen along with him to seize everything used to produce pirated products related to his orders. But due to corruption those companies often get to know about these visits in time - so they simply move their production facility or e.g. objectionable molds to another place. All that's left is a huge bill for all the efforts that Seven Towns has to pay with basically receiving no results. And even if someone gets caught and stuff is destroyed or taken away, they simply produce new molds and start producing again somewhere else.
As you now may realize, this procedure is not really effective... opposed to simply let custom officers do their job in the countries we live where as a result - unfortunately - we are the ones to suffer.

Do I as a speedcuber, a person being affected by all this, like the way things are? In this case, not really. But eventually it is on me as a responsible customer to be aware of what I am allowed to import and what not. "Ignorance of the law is no excuse." This means if I still decide to take the risk of importing items that are illegal and I get caught, than I have to live with possible consequences.
So what to do about it? Either order from store based in the country where you lice or order DIY-Kits; I personally prefer them anyway and that usually prevents these kind of copyright problems.

anyway, in all objectivity Seven Towns is in the right doing what they do. If we like it or not. If they would not care about KO products, shops (and I'm talking about retail stores, not only internet shops) would be flooded with those 'illegal' cubes and the copyright owner could harldy make any money. That is not only true for Seven Towns but basically for any copyright owners.
And to the lawyers it usually is all or nothing, there is no difference between internet shop owners, retail store owners and consumers - they all import illegal items if they order cubes that resemble the looks of a Rubiks Cube (from the outside - as this is what is copyrighted).

As Stefan said, this isn't a new problem to us cubers and after things peter out it surely sometime will come up again. This wasn't the first time.
Thinking of Seven Towns even sponsoring some of our competitions on one hand (without closely looking at the cubes we use) while going for those who infringe their copyright (everyone importing copyright infringing cubes) puts us in a grey area: It's a kind of symbiosis we all should be aware of.
Hence I think stirring up the issue thus far as some cubers recently do, here and elsewhere, some without knowing/caring about coherences or worse, without some real education regarding patents and copyrights apart from their personal conclusions proportional to what they claim, Those cubers may do even more harm than good (thinking of getting customs attention resulting in more packages getting destroyed on a regular basis, losing Seven Towns as a sponsor,... maybe a little far fetched but not too unlikely when thinking of a few naive kids telling the press during interviews at competitions).
If you simply don't like capitalism as well as it's rules - which on a very basic level are the reasons for these issues - and thus you complain and scold Seven Towns, you either live in the wrong country or you should go into politics to make some changes.

What you actually should to instead of cursing Seven Towns is throw some light on how to prevent copyright infringements by ordering the right things (not in a legal way, but in a way causing the least problems).
Again: if possible order from local stores only or limit yourself to DIY kits.
 
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Blatant copy of CBC's facebook post on this, just getting the important part:

ONLY assembled black 3x3's with the classic rubiks cube colour scheme applied to it are in danger. Any white cube is legal and anything 2x2, 4x4 and above are legal. Apparently the colour scheme on a black 3x3 is ALL that matters. The copyright is so delicate too that even make one single turn on the cube alters the colour scheme and is now legal. THAT is how stupid this whole thing is. You can take a black 3x3 with the rubiks cube colour scheme, do an R turn on it and now it's legal.
 

SenileGenXer

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Eric79, I checked out your youtube channel and your first video was a review of the Zhanchi from Lightake. You recognized the great design of the cube and shrilled shamelessly for Lightake. Was that the sort of responsibility you want the rest of us to bear as consumers? Don't be so quick to moralize especially when your moralizing comes with some huge anti-Chinese prejudices hiding underneath.

I am a little bit educated about copyrights. They are subtle and brutal. I have felt something like manic avarice at the thought of having state sanctioned monopoly on my work but I have also seen how copyright is used by the least creative people to capture the work of the creatives. How it is extended absurdly and used to control others. How it reinforces social hierarchy among those like to follow the rules.

I think this is a copyfight that needs to happen. You know the "rights holders" in the cubing world are trying to exert a legal monopoly to remove consumer choice. To suppress far superior designs. To hamper and if they could to destroy something very special. On some level the rights holders are big on the "Chinese are thieves" bandwagon and if the rights holders ever win our community would be in a much worse place.

Again I don't think Seven Town can buy the moral rights to the cube - don't go and mentally assign moral superiority to their case.
 
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sneaklyfox

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Blatant copy of CBC's facebook post on this, just getting the important part:

ONLY assembled black 3x3's with the classic rubiks cube colour scheme applied to it are in danger. Any white cube is legal and anything 2x2, 4x4 and above are legal. Apparently the colour scheme on a black 3x3 is ALL that matters. The copyright is so delicate too that even make one single turn on the cube alters the colour scheme and is now legal. THAT is how stupid this whole thing is. You can take a black 3x3 with the rubiks cube colour scheme, do an R turn on it and now it's legal.

Is this true? So why don't all the cube stores send the assembled cubes to us with one turn? Or checkerboard pattern with solution to fix that (for non-cubers).
 
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