Some people made a chip that masquerades as a FTDI chip. Folks are upset that those chips don’t work anymore. They are blaming FTDI, not the people they bought the chip from. No one sees the problem here?
The only way this adds up is if the purchasers of the chip think counterfeiting is okay - that’s the only way to be pissed at FTDI and not the counterfeit supplier.
If you bought FETs from Digikey that turned out to be knockoffs, would you be pissed at Digikey or Vishay? Why is this any different?
Nothing was sabotaged. FTDI’s driver simply asks ANYTHING with THEIR PID to set the PID to zero. Genuine FTDI devices do nothing. Fakes accept the command and set their PID to zero. something easily reversible. Not sabotage, and wouldn’t happen if the device didn’t pretend to be one of theirs.
If FTDI drivers were screwing around with other vendors PIDs, sure you could call that sabotage. What they’re actually doing is sending commands to devices that are claiming to be to be FTDI chips.
Well, it attempts to disable the chip. I don’t see how that’s not sabotage.
Easily reversible - how? If it requires access to the PCB, then it’s not what I would count as easily reversible.
AFIAK, the PC industry has a long history of chips pretending to be other chips. That’s part of how we got to here from being an IBM-only platform, as well as chips for its video, audio, and many other subsystems were like this.
We are talking about China. US law does not apply. Intellectual property in China - Wikipedia is one reference to help understand the situation of intellectual property in China better.
If a chip has FTDI’s name on it, of course they are going to blame FTDI. FTDI would have to prove that the chip did not come from them, but how they would do that is unknown. Chip makers change their chip designs, so as much as anyone knows, one of their chips might have had this flaw which they are claiming to be from someone else when it might actually be authentically from FTDI.
The people might not know they have a device with a chip that is or pretends to be an FTDI chip in it. This kind of means #2 might be circumvented and the “brand name” on the device (which might also be a counterfeit) would be yelled at. This might mean that a reputable maker could get complaints and law suits instead of FTDI over a chip that pretends to be an FFTDI chip.
China has had multiple intellectual property cases filed against them.
Microsoft responded to FTDI’s action by stating that FTDI have pulled two updates (I assume for Windows 7 and 8) so there’s some action. If the updates have been pulled then we might see a reversion or more acceptable update. More to come I guess.
2.) The FTDI logo, which most of these counterfeits use, is definitely copyrighted. The FTDI name, which again most of these counterfeits use (or else there would be no confusion between them and real chips) is also definitely trademarked. Also, FTDI paid USB.org for a license. Just because something is not copyrightable, patentable, or a trademark, does not mean it is not protected by law. Anyway - counterfeiters can use a VID/PID, sure - but there’s no room to be pissed when the rightful user of that VID/PID initiates a command which is handled just fine by the rightful user’s chips! Using someone else’s VID/PID means your device is no longer USB compliant, so you have no room to market it as such. FTDI even offers free sublicensees of their VID, in the form of a PID, though obviously counterfeiters aren’t interested in that since it wouldn’t get them access to FTDI’s drivers!
I still see absolutely no problem with what FTDI did, whether the pulled the drivers or not. (I’m actually disappointed that they did) You have your opinion, I have mine. No reason for further discussion.
@Jelle_Boomstra Intellectual Property does very much occur in law! For instance:
“Modern usage of the term intellectual property goes back at least as far as 1867 with the founding of the North German Confederation whose constitution granted legislative power over the protection of intellectual property”
I’ve given several links to support this!
It is not illegal to send a command over a USB port to a device that is claiming to be one of your own. There has not been a case in all of history, nor a law, to support such a claim - a good thing to research is Black Sunday, when DIrecTV disabled around 100k counterfeit satellite receivers. The disabling was more signifigant in terms of damage than the FTDI case, but I still cannot find a single lawsuit brought against DirecTV. It simply isn’t illegal to send commands to devices identifying themselves as your own.
Lets be clear: FTDI is sending commands to chips that identify themselves as FTDI chips. That has never been, is not currently, and will likely not ever be illegal. FTDI is not sending commands to Prolific or SiLabs chips. They are sending commands to devices that identify themselves AS GENUINE FTDI ICs.
If the counterfeiters had used legitimate VIDs/PIDs, none of this would have been an issue. That is a fact, but somehow you continue to attribute all of the blame to FTDI.