Heron, The Autoflight gearbox is superior to other designs as well as using first class materials, the input shaft design is novel. It was patentable when I first designed this system but didn't because it would add cost and this is a small niche market, hell who would bother copying it. There is no loose joint from the crank to the output shaft to move or fret only gear clearance. The rubber drive takes care of the "normal" engine pulses. There would be over 400 units out " doing the business " over five years ( Autoflight Ltd ). So it would seem it is worth copying, I would have at least thought these people would have contacted me to discuss a license deal. As you will see from another post here ( where the china copiers are copying the Zenon ) they actively hid from Autoflight hoping to get to the market before I noticed. We don't have snakes in NZ but china does. Interesting enough there are rules about selling direct copies in Australia and in NZ, patented or not. I am using Trade and Enterprise to investigate having these copies stopped from sale in these countries. In the future I will now have to look into protecting my intellectual property.
The SCEO (BMW clone) was unveiled in 2005 and is powered by a range of Mitsubishi engines. Sure, the SCEO is a reversed engineering inspired by a previous generation BMW X5 but it’s a lot of car for a little money in China, and also, quite possibly the most important part, SCEO drivers manage to drive their SUV’s much better than their X5 driving equivalents. This is good news for consumers, bringing the prospect of half-price vehicles. BWM lost the court case, both in patent and intellectual property in Europe and joined the Chinese. Currently the SCEO is sold thought-out Europe, Russia, and all other Asian countries. Despite German technology, VW in Brasil made some incredible innovations on a Ty3 VW , later all adopted by the German manufacturer.
But let’s put things in perspective, claiming the use of superior material without disclosing the nature of your material is a technical aberration, we have disclosed the material, hardness and design rules were used in the gears and castings . Gears are gears, and therefore not patentable nor do they have any intellectual right attached to it. The original boxes (3 of them) were 3D in the States and there was a measure disparity at the base of the box in relation to its cover, we have corrected this problem making it totally uniform. We have increased the internal size of the final output shaft and slightly increased the size of the main gear. Initially we tested the box using equidistant pulses over one shaft revolution and it showed a fair amount of vibrations, the manufacturer not being happy with the results tested the box with propeller with the Runge-Kutta method, using a pressure oil filled flywheel to the box and was happy to inform 95% of the torsional vibrations were rectified. We are not using the SKF KMFE8 main shaft bearing retainer, as the original is modified and not in the specifications by SKF. Destructively tested The AeroFlight 33, showed some hair line cracks at the upper casing and sharing of the pins at the main shaft locating the flexible coupling. The all new AeroFlight 44Tand soon to be released, has all gears made in Titanium and, high-pressured injected castings and rated up to 400HP!
Does reverse engineering infringe an owner’s copyright? The answer is no. Generally, the Copyright Act prohibits copying someone else’s intellectual property, including software code. However, consider the legislative purpose of the Copyright Act—the act was designed to encourage the free flow of ideas. To protect your business from claims of copyright infringement, you will need to demonstrate that you actually engineered the property. The NZTE has no authority to stop sales of any reversed engineering items.
The final stage of the reverse engineering process is the introduction of a new product into the marketplace. These new products are often innovations of the original product with competitive designs, features, or capabilities. These products may also be adaptations of the original product for use with other integrated systems. Copyright does not cover ideas, processes, procedures, systems, or methods of operation nor does prevent the sales of it in any part of the world.
Lastly, your published email at the board, shows clearly it was never concealed to you the boxes were reversed engineered, subsequent emails to you with an open invitation to join as equal using our vastly superior engineering capabilities, manufacturing processes and investments and with your excellent mechanical expertise in this venture and for the benefit not only for us, but capable to deliver to the consumer excellent products with an unique and powerful brand* name well established around the world at a cheaper rate. Please consider all this before the snakes start biting.
Thanks
Albert
Adendum:
Addressed to Heron:
There is no loose joint from the crank to the output shaft to move or fret only gear clearance.
This correct, with all the copious amount of 3M (thread lockers for securing nuts and bolt) and the looking nut SKF KMFE8, that the shaft as mentioned in the previous post could have ever moved, except for a shaft failure itself or at some other unspecified reasons or vibrations.