“LUXPRO, a Taiwan-based maker of digital audio products, has introduced what can only be described as a blatant rip-off of Apple’s iPod shuffle. LUXPRO’s ‘Super shuffle,’ which is being shown this week at the CeBIT conference in Germany, is nearly identical to the iPod shuffle in every way–from its form factor to its name and advertising,” iPodlounge reports.
“Made from the same white plastic and featuring the same control pad as the iPod shuffle, the Super shuffle is also the exact length (3.3″) and width (0.99″) as the iPod shuffle. The flash memory-based Super shuffle is a little thicker (0.38″) than the iPod shuffle (0.33″), but offers an FM tuner and voice recorder, which the Apple device lacks,” iPodlounge reports.
“Like the iPod shuffle, the Super shuffle is offered only in 512MB and 1GB sizes, and works with both Windows and Mac OS X. Pricing and availability were not immediately available. However, MacNews.de was able to snap a handful of photos of the device and its advertising at CeBIT, which show that LuxPro is not only cloning Apple’s low-cost player, but is also replicating its well-known silhouette ads,” iPodlounge reports.
Full article, more images, and links here.
MacNews.de has photos of the device from CeBIT here.
LUXPRO’s ‘Super shuffle’ webpage here.
MacDailyNews Take: Wow, right down to the earbuds and the lowercase “s” in “shuffle.” But, they really should’ve called it the “iSuper shuffle.” LUXPRO ought to include a note saying, “Designed by Apple in California,” on their ‘Super shuffle’ packaging. For those wondering, Apple has won cases like this before.
Alert: Your site has performed an illegal operation! If not corrected, it will be shut down in…
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Wow. Imitation IS the sincerest form of flattery . . . but this is clearly actionable. I do believe Apple will reap windfall damages from this little stunt!
So Apple can sue by saying that this company is trying to confuse consumers with this product? I mean, did Apple get a patent or how is Apple’s shuffle protected from people copying them like this company did.
Can they do anything about this? Isn’t Taiwan immuned to copyright laws?
Go get’em lawyers
When will the Chinese from Taiwan or Mainland China start to respect intellectual property right? Shame, shame, shame!
The lawyers at Apple are probably chanting “Yes! Yes! Yes!” coz this is such easy money.
Wow, this company is really in for it. Wait till Steve finds out (if he already doesn’t know). I’ll bet he’s really, really, really, pissed.
Brando; it’s called Trade Dress infringement. You might want to look it up. P&G has a group of lawyers who’s only job is to protect them on that issue.
Note to LUXPRO:
How DUMB can you get? Your chances of getting away with
this are less than playing Russian Roulette.
what can Apple Legal do?
I guess I need to know more about copy right laws, but unless some technology was stolen, isn’t it legal?
Is it possible this is just an oriental thing? I mean, all the “copies” of highly creative products come from China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea et al, right? They just copy other products but don’t create much on their own.
WMV
Cool… I want one!
“Oriental” is for describing rugs, not people. I prefer “Gook,” myself.
Excuse me now, I have to go whip up some chicken for dinner.
To DanK
Nope not legal
you need to look up Trade Dress Infringement
basically you cannot copy someone else design and this is a copy right down the line
Apple’s won on this basis before as have other companies
They have to know they are blatently violating intellectual property rights, so it’s odd that they decided to announce ahead of time… Now Apple can just get a TRO and make sure not a single one gets sold.
Is this for real? Looks like a prank to me. No one could put out a product that’s absolutely identical and think they can get away with it. Not even the prince of darkness himself, Bill Gates, would do it — for legal reasons, if not ethical and PR ones.
if the apple shuffle had and radio tuner, id buy one
Isn’t LUXPRO a subsidiary of the SOSUEME Corporation?
http://www.luxproproducts.com
yes, we got shuffle plans from brother in factory, he head boss there.
we enable WMA and voice on chipset, real easy since it built in chipset already. FM cheap too so we put that on there too, just solder 2 leads.
no need iTunes or AAC that just firmware, people hack that on for us later with updates. we make bank on this, get market share for chinese. everyone buy millions super shuffle rather than ipod cause it cheaper and more features.
chinese state government back company, no need for lawyers, be in court for years.
big middle finger steve jobs! thanks for design and money for china!
I have a 1GB iPod shuffle. I really wish it had an FM tuner and voice recorder!
http://www.luxpro.com.tw
Looks like it is for real.
oh, next month super mini come out, but it red like colorwarepc.com mini, with big star on top for china.
run any linux instead, $199 with better video card 64mb and 512mb standard. also have digital audio out and super shuffle dock on top. case all plastic like iBook.
Dont you guys know anything? God. These guys in Taiwan make this stuff, then resell it to American companies to sell here. They design, make it, build it. Most of them keep the rights to the design to sell overseas in some shape or fashion.
“What do the COCA-COLA bottle shape, Campbell’s soup label, and dust jacket of Merriam-Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary have in common? All three are examples of distinctive product packaging known in trademark-speak as “trade dress.””
From: http://copylaw.com/new_articles/tradedress.html
So, this company is going under. Why did they do it? Are they that stupid?
more from that link so everyone understands:
“Trade dress is governed by the same set of laws that protects unregistered trademarks. Like a traditional trademark, trade dress is a form of commercial shorthand that provides a “source-associating cue” for the unthinking purchaser. However, unlike traditional trademark law that protects words or logos, trade dress law protects the total packaging and design of a product.
To be protectable, trade dress must be inherently distinctive or possess “secondary meaning” (the public associates the packaging with a single source). Further, the trade dress must be non-functional.
As a rule, for trade dress to be protected, it must be instantaneously identifiable in the mind of the purchaser. This is usually the function of strong sales over a long period, supported by consistent advertising, promotion and publicity.”
Quoth Bishop:
Dont you guys know anything? God. These guys in Taiwan make this stuff, then resell it to American companies to sell here. They design, make it, build it. Most of them keep the rights to the design to sell overseas in some shape or fashion.
Don’t you know anything, Bishop? God. These guys at Apple do their own design work, then hire companies in Taiwan to do the manufacturing. The manufacturers do not & never have owned the rights to these designs. Besides, it’s news to me that LUXPRO has anything to do with manufacturing the real iPod shuffle, so they aren’t even on the list of people who could have legal rights to the design.
Ya know, what really amazes me is how quickly they pulled this off. I wonder how long it took Apple to design and manufacture the shuffle? It only took 2 months to copy it. Reminds me of that eOne iMac rip off years ago, how long did that last? It wasn’t even at exact as this. I do wish the Apple shuffle had a am/fm radio and voice recorder in it. What would it cost and what would it hurt to put it in there? Anyone have any idea?
Yeah it looks pretty sweet. It looks awesome. That shuffle, it’s… it’s incredible.
I noticed that it has the same weight and battery life, too. No AAC playback.
I have an iPod shuffle and I’m glad it doesn’t have an FM tuner. Who wants to listen to the crap on FM anyway, that’s what an iPod is for!
It pains me to compliment these knock-off artists but the radio tuner would be a good addition. Also, their model has an on-off slider on the back with ridges on the surface, making it easier to grip. The Apple shuffle’s slider is so featureless that it’s damn-near impossible to move.
Still, I hope and expect that Apple’s lawyer’s will get Medieval on their asses.
who needs cable tv, we have DVDs…
radio != music station
cable != rented DVDs.
any content on my iPod is old.
Given that FM capability is already built in to the chip, there must be a reason that Apple didn’t make it a feature. Could it be that it works so shitty that no self-respecting manufacturer would want their name on one? A couple of years ago I coughed up for FM radio/headphones for my Motorola phone. The reception was so poor and variable that it was unuseable. A complete waste of time and money.
“Oriental” is for describing rugs, not people.
The idea that the word “oriental” is offensive when applied to people seems to be American, and (IMHO) is incorrect. An oriental (person) is someone from where the sun rises (Orient \O”ri*ent\, a. [F., fr. L. oriens, -entis, p. pr. of “oriri” to rise. See Origin.]) – in other words…someone from the Far East. The Japanese even call their country “The Land of the Rising Sun”.
Asia was what the Romans called the eastern part of the Earth from Turkey – that makes the term “Asia” rather non-descriptive when applied to everyone east of Turkey.
In the UK an Asian is generally considered to be someone from the Indian Subcontinent (Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh particularly).
The western counterpart of “oriental” is “occidental”.
It really is odd how some people (especially Americans) come to consider offensive perfectly innocent and descriptive words (e.g. coloured, negro etc)
perfusion… come on… apple likes to control things.
frustratingly so.
They want to control what you do with their products.
Either that or with a little market pressure, Apple will “upgrade” the Shuffle so as to “resell” them to current owners of the unit… with enhanced capabilities of “FM” and then when people complain… again resell them with Voice Recording…
common practice to cripple the product in order to encourage the upgrade.
hey anonymous… are you oriental?
MP3 players in the same USB form factor existed before the Shuffle. Apple made it white, work with iTunes and randomized the playing capability. I doubt seriously those changes are being infringe upon. I also doubt you can patent eating your desert/salad at a different order than the rest of the meal.
I want one, I need to record lectures and listen to NPR –
The Shuffle is manufactured in Asia, and most the the Cupertino engineers on the newly created iPod division are Chinese. I know cause my brother in-law works there. SO, It is sort of ironic no? I want a product that does what I want, not a logo
MICROSOFT is behind this.
I noticed on the LuxPro product page that one of the file formats is WMA-DRM. That means Windows Media’s digital rights management scheme.
Soooooooo, it stands to reason that Microsoft knew what LuxPro was up to.
That’s my story today and I’m sticking to it.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />
Tera Patricks
Mac360.com
Regarding the speed of which this thing hit market, it almost has to be because somebody at one of the authrorized manufacturers blabbed, if not the actual design then the idea in specific terms to the buds at Luxpro. As noted, its mostly standard chips in Apple-style packaging. But it is also blatant trade dress infringement. I can’t beleive they even did the white earphones…. “Hey, lets poke Apple with a sharp stick and see what happens!”
As far as it being a joke: Given that they set up boots at CEBIT for it and are about to get the Mother of All Summons from the Apple lawyers, its going to be a damned expensive one for Luxpro.
And for geography: Its a Taiwanese company, not a Chinese company. Get your geography straight.
“They want to control what you do with their products.”
Geez, Atomic, That sounds familiar.
hmmm… kind of like homosexual is for some strange reason offensive.
kernel: yes, annoying isn’t it?
apple frustrated me at times.
No phat, I’m occidental
B-sabre
Be smart, the Beijing government would greatly disagree with you on the Taiwan issue, Besides, the official language of Taiwan is Chinese – back to your misinformation corner bubba
dobbie:
What the Communist government thinks about Taiwan only matters to me to the extent that it puts American lives in jeopardy, and doesn’t enter into this discussion.
But Taiwan is, for all intents and purposes, a seperate country with its own set of laws and legal standards from mainland China. Which is what is important in this case.
Several of the posts here have alluded to it being made in mainland China. (Luxpro:”oh, next month super mini come out, but it red like colorwarepc.com mini, with big star on top for china.”) Which maybe it is, given the economic links between the two. But the company is in Taiwan.
And who cares if they speak Chinese? Its a rip-off in any language.
And it’s “Mr. Bubba Sir!” to you, dubby….
Apple’s gotta take this one down. Clearly LuxPro is saying, “It’s almost exactly like an iPod, but cheaper and made by us”. Except it isn’t an iPod; but it looks so close that many may say “what the heck” and buy one anyway. That’s a sale lost to Apple. It’s kind of like building a car that looks almost exactly like a Corvette—utilizing the market built up by GM—but with a little different trim and maybe different performance, and then pocketing the money instead of a sale going to GM.
Hmm… sounds a bit like MicroSoft doesn’t it.
You can’t sell cola in a wave “coke”-shaped bottle; you can’t sell mp3 players that “look” like iconoclastic iPods.
(I can’t believe I am saying this, but…) Lawyers, have at it.
Let’s copy the look and the name and even the advertising. Apple Legal will have a field day in court with this one.
Replay,
Marcie88 said:
I want the product that does what I want not the logo.
I am 100% behind that concept – I find the idea of brand loyaty absurd. I use a Mac because it does what I want just about the way I want it. If Taiwan or anyone else comes up with the similar product that does more, I’ll buy it – as for their lawyers… they can eat each other and the world will be better place.
SUE SUE SUE STEVEY BOY!!!
These chinese idiots have just walked into a multi-million dollar lawsuit!.
Go to court – get an injunction to stop them selling the things and then SUE!
Apple may well be able to stop the thing from being sold HERE, but you have to wonder how they will stop the thing from proliferating in the Pacific Rim. The USPTO has no legal right to tell anybody in Taiwan anything. They can protest as much as they like, but ultimately it’s up to the ROC whether or not they want to enforce American copyright law. You’d have to think LuxPro is banking on selling a ton of these in China, which leads to an interesting question: which do China and Taiwan value more, a good economic/political relationship with the US, or a good economic/political relationship with each other? Raise your hand if you think each other…
Ive just emailed the relevent authorities about this.
Expect alot of fireworks in the middle east over this!
Blatant breach of copyright.
beatsme:
I think these guys might be interested in suing:
http://www.apple.com.tw/
Yes, Apple has a branch in Taiwan. Expect them to lead the charge against Luxpro.
I am going to chew and spit out those BASTARDS. No originality or creativity. We need to make our products in in the USA.
Support American Workers!!!
Everybody email that company and to the press.
Stop those people
I have a few Vietnamese, Sri Lankan, and Chinese friends and none of them like the word “oriental” when referring to a person’s nationality. So to some people of Asian descent, it IS offensive.
Oriental smoriental.
Artisticualted: Trade dress infringement is not quite as cut and dry as you alude in your snippy little comment. This concept floats around the periphery of the unregistered trademarks idea, and, it hinges on whether the complete, overall, packaged retail offering is confusingly similar to another complete, packaged retail offering, to the unthinking buyer, as to the source of the two products. In other words, on a wire rack at Target or CompUSA, in their respective retail packages, would an unthinking buyer assume that these two products both came from the same source?
You are right in one respect, that this would boil down to a judgement call by a judge or a jury, and would pivot on the determination of trade dress infringement. That said, this product can be renamed, packaged distinctively differently from Apple’s iPod shuffle, and fly past the scrutiny of a trade dress claim.
There is no U.S. design patent application filed by Apple on the shuffle, as it is not of a sufficiently distinctive form to earn such a patent. Copyright is not in play, as the two products have distinctly different firmware controlling them.
Apple gambled on releasing a near-generic, near-featureless, cheap portable music player, and hanging the iPod name on it. I guarantee that they knew all along that imitative products would quickly come to market. And, they proceeded, based on the reality that the core iTunes compatibility of the shuffle would continue to insulate it from those competitors in the marketplace.
As a purely business-based move, I respect LuxPro for accurately disecting the various legal issues, and finding a path whereby they can proceed to market with a very competitive Windows-oriented counterpart to Apple’s shuffle. Given that they go the next step of clearly differentiating the actual product name and the retail packaging, they will have no problems from Apple Legal.
I want to add two things to my above post:
1. I am surprised that LuxPro has used the name ‘shuffle’ with this product, as it is the one move in this play that actually is a clear case of trademark infringement. Though not yet issued, Apple has a pending application for trademark protection wiht eht USPTO for ‘shuffle.’
2. The use at CeBit of the silhouette-style graphics was also a mistake, as it points to the possibility that LuxPor intends to mimic Apple’s retail packaging.
If they adjust their course, and adopt strikingly different retail packaging, and a clearly different product name, LuxPro’s legally free and clear in both the North America and EU markets wiht this product.
This sort of annoys me. I just bought an iPod shuffle from Apple that I know has the same capability as this clone; voice recording and FM tuner. I might have actually bought this if it had been available. 😀
Anyway, I hope they sue their arses off. There’s no way you can have that similar a design and marketing strategy and get away with it, in any country in the world.
I sent the contact us link on their site an email and got it back: see below.
This is the Postfix program at host luxpro.com.tw.
I’m sorry to have to inform you that the message returned
below could not be delivered to one or more destinations.
For further assistance, please send mail to
If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the message returned below.
The Postfix program
<service@luxpro.com.tw>: unknown user: “service”
The simple truth is this Luxpro have designed a product that recreates the features of a competitor. Added in a few features that it considered to be value-add. None of this is a problem, what they have done is mimic the design of a competitive product, the white packageing, the control interface, the name and the packaging. This would be enough to get an injunction in any court to stop LuxPro from selling the product.
Now if Luxpro had changed the colour, modified the control interface slightly and not called a shuffle, Apple would have found it substantially harder to litigate. Even if the product was physically the same dimensions as the iPod shuffle.
B-Sabre: read Jack’s post. He’s encapsulated the issue pretty well.
Don’t the Chinese and Koreans remember that we saved their asses from Japanese brutality in the 40’s? They’d still be slave laber if we didn’t step in.
Geez, Show some respect for a change.
LuxPros next product…
The Muffle.
hahahaha
little friday humor there.
You can get an FM tuner and headphones with replaceable 30+ hour battery life for $10 from Sony. Why pay $99?
You can get a digital recorder + FM for $29. Why pay $99.
You bought an iPod shuffle to play MP3’s. If you wanted to play and/or record FM you could have saved a lot of money.
Swiss Army Knife like digital devices rarely do anything well.
DM
I find your observation sad ( as in pathetic )
What Luxpro is doing is called business.
Don’t like how they do it, too unethical for you; challenge them in court but PLEASE don’t suggest we shame them, they’re not Catholic.
Next product copied from Apple by Luxpro will be
Mac mini Super
While DM has it right, but these folks clearly don’t consider “ethics” a high priority…
DM & RT:
It’s not like the whole country is doing it, so why is it about “ethics”?
Because of their cheap labors, you can have your pants on.
And remember, Apple’s products are made by those you-saved-their-asses people, too.
What I’m trying to say is that it is the company “LUXPRO” that copies the design, not the whole Asian community, and don’t even start the war thing.
What’s so offensive about being called Oriental anyway? American orientals seem to take offense to the term. I don’t understand what’s wrong with it.
“Brown Stains on the Wall” by Who Flung Poo
YAYA
If you don’t like being called bubba, people shouldn’t call you bubba.
What part of not liking it don’t you understand?
It’s just a pulicity stunt.
Bah
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” /> Apple needs to stop getting all crazy. So what if there is a lookalike. Not like this world hasn’t been down that route before.
How about people here stop separating their sentences into single lines and double-spacing. Write your words into a single paragraph and stop with the off-topic remarks already. As far as the Super Shuffle. I had to look twice to see it wasn’t an Apple iPod Shuffle. What a blatant ripoff. They will be sued and lose guaranteed.
These guys are Really Stupid. Even if this was for publicity they still needed to make them and incur the die costs of the casings and elctronics. Then of course the ad is a blatant rip off too.
They have nothing to gain by doing this than to get sued so bad their great ancestors will have to gough up some dough.
Many companies copy, but that is pathetic.
this really sucks. i’m ashamed to be taiwanese. forget the FM tuner and voice recorder. what good is that when you don’t have a screen, how can you know which frequency you’re tuned into, or how far you’ve recorded?
In going through forums, it seems that most of the people who are upset are IPOD owners or MAC owners. I wonder why? Maybe it’s because IPODS are overpriced and for people with confidence problems. I’m guessing most people spent way too much, and don’t want others to join their stupid club for less. Anyone who would pay $400 for a walkman just to look “cool” is an idiot anyhow.
Is this a rip off? Yes, but it’s not like taking “others” ideas is something foreign to America. Americans complaining about stolen ideas, when their entire film industry should be called “The Remake”.
America – Instead of being efficient, we’ll pay more for local goods and put higher tariffs on imports
.
“Since I have copywrite laws, so should the rest of the world”
Like DUH its so obvious that its a blatant rip-off. So DUH the company who made it obviously knows this OH so well. They wouldnt have done it if they were gona get their asses SUED for sure!
Different culture. Who cares about your patriotism or ethics or racist comments. They dont give a shit. At the end of the day its all about profits. Cry all you want. Dont buy it. Unless your stupid enough to think its an Apple…
looks like they now named it the Tanget Shuffle…
I agree with you .
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