191–200 of 291 posts
Sidebar: Why has the AirPod design become so ubiquitous? I always thought they were the ugliest earbuds since earbuds became small. Is there some technical reason they have this design? Or do people actually like it? Or is it simply the Apple effect?
Anything is better than the fully in-ear design that makes up 90% of earbuds on the market.
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I’m fairly certain they are the exact same ones confiscated. It’s a near blatant knockoff of Apple’s patented designs. Now should Apple be able to get said all encompassing design patents? That’s a different debate.
Looks like rather generic design to me, especially since a substantial parts of are basically dictated by the human anatomy. So regardless the questionable nature of design patents in the first place, this design certainly does not warrant such patents. But in any case, that's for a court to decide. Does the USA actively seize other products that violate patents without a court case? How would they even determine inf…
How else would you prevent counterfeit goods from entering a country? For domestic mad counterfeits, it's possible to enforce laws (or court orders) prohibiting manufacture, but that's not really the case when the products are made overseas.
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CBP has no idea what your intention is. Would you agree that a reasonable assumption that if an electronic is shipped with an AC adaptor, then that electronic will be used with it? And CBP does not have a crystal ball: - Are you using it as is? - If the UL marking is fake, who is to know about the entire thing? - Are you going to resell this? If so, is the AC adaptor going with it? - How do they know that this was an…
"what should they have done?" Seized the adapters. That would have been enough for me to be more careful about adapters in the future. Seizing the whole shipment hurts me, but not the supplier. See my other example here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24469959 There's any number of things you might not expect, and the receiver is the only one hurt when they are a smaller player.
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I dunno, that sounds correct to me (contra the article here where they're just mindbogglingly wrong). The customs process isn't designed to prioritize customer value, it's designed to prevent counterfeit goods from reaching the market. These were counterfeit. Demanding that they part out the shipment for you to separate the stuff-they-can't-prove-is-counterfeit from the stuff-recipient-actually-wants isn't their job.…
They wouldn't "part it out", they would let me do it. This was an air shipment and the goods were in the same city I'm in. While I'm not happy with the supplier, I don't think this was intentional on their part either. They just source AC adapters from someone else in Shenzhen. You can imagine they aren't real familiar with the consequences of trademark infringement. Which is what this was. Edit: Note that it was all…
OnePlus official reply to CBP tweet. Hey, give those back! Upside-down face. https://twitter.com/OnePlus_USA/status/1305366058501509121
Edit: saw others comments re: possibly at Apple's behest due to perceived infringement. Though I'm sure we'd have read about that before now.
Not sure I understand how this is newsworthy exactly, people make mistakes (even those on HN) and there is due process and recourse for whoever was impacted by this mistake. If the implication is that if law enforcement make mistakes they cannot be legitimate then I think we should just give up on the idea, but I guess this is more or less what is being advocated for, so maybe it can be stated more directly.
I wouldn't be so sure. When you're going up against the US government and the largest US corporation it's going to be an uphill battle.
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They wouldn't "part it out", they would let me do it. This was an air shipment and the goods were in the same city I'm in. While I'm not happy with the supplier, I don't think this was intentional on their part either. They just source AC adapters from someone else in Shenzhen. You can imagine they aren't real familiar with the consequences of trademark infringement. Which is what this was. Edit: Note that it was all…
They would do the same thing if your car was impounded because you were driving around and selling drugs.
This stupid business of implementing tariffs and then giving specific companies exemptions is not exactly fair, but its also not the fault of CBP.
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You seem assume that CBP will just trust you on your word alone. That's my entire point. They don't know what your intentions with this are, nor if you are being truthful.
If that's true... then they should investigate, not make an assumption and simply capture all of someones valuable property. OP is inside of the US, and probably lives here as well. He's not a flight risk, and its totally reasonable to ask them to go through slow bureaucratic means to make sure they get it right. CBP acts like they are the first line in a war when really they ought to be helping people come into comp…
Taped to the wall on the Sault Ste. Marie crossing CBP station:
"We Are The First Line Of Defense"
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It was, but the follow-up action designed to minimize risk of loss when caught by customs rather than avoiding import of fraudulent goods blurred image of your intentions. If you can get the shipments split, I'm sure you could also get them to not send the power adapters at all. If, however, you needed power adapters, you need to import proper ones - not just for legal reasons, but for the safety of the end-users.
> It was, but the follow-up action designed to minimize risk of loss when caught by customs rather than avoiding import of fraudulent goods blurred image of your intentions. It seems pretty clear to me, I think you're missing the point of the post. It's that this person is protecting his business in a way that's effective because the government isn't, and this is what he's forced to do when dealing with agencies that…