Lajo Products.. Illegal and Unauthorized?

[Sypher]

I was on a site buying an iSkin Exo2 when I came across this:

http://www.mann-trading.co.uk/produc...kinwarning.htm

I've seen a lot of people seem to have bought Lajo's products.. (been lurking in this forum for a while getting info on the iPod lol.. very useful site) and I gather that Lajo split from iSkin.. but why are they saying this about his products.. is it true?

[Eros]

iSkin Inc is the owner of the name (iSkin) and was the original designer of the product (See http://www.iskin.com/corporate.html). It seems Lajo was a manufacturing partner who got greedy and split from the owners of iSkin. It would be similar to the factory in Asia that makes the iPod breaking away from Apple and selling iPods on their own (Not Kosher). iSkin Inc owns the domain name and when I typed in xskin.com for my own investigative purposes it linked back to iSkin.com. This is very strange because it would make absolute sense for an owner to first prioritize the protection of intellectual property as I have come to understand from business school. Chinese companies have had a long history of manufacturing knock offs. Please see an article I found in fortune magazine (This is not the full article)


Beijing's Phony War On Fakes

Welcome to the People's Republic of Counterfeiting, where everything from
soap to software is pirated-- and even the government's crackdown isn't
real.
By Richard Behar

The three-story building in Pinghu had been raided a month earlier for
making fake Rolexes. So when a team of Chinese government agents knocked on
the door of the Wei Da watch factory in Guangdong province, they were
admitted like familiar guests. Workers served them tea in fine chinaware,
while two dozen blank-faced girls remained seated around a long, rectangular
table, gluing tiny minute marks onto the faces of watch dials. After a
half-hour, a manager gave the word and the girls fled down an alleyway--but
not before lining up to punch a time clock. When the raiders were finished
combing through the factory, they filled a truck with more than 10,000
counterfeit watch dials (mostly Omega, Rolex, Casio, and Citizen), along
with 106 sets of molds. The boss was nowhere to be found, but on his desk
were wads of cash and two thick catalogs filled with dozens of sample dials.
His punishment: a $400 fine.

For the counterfeiters, it was a day like any other in Guangdong, China's
richest and fastest-growing region. The unmarked factory in Pinghu is one of
thousands like it in southern China. It is estimated that a quarter of the
world's watch production is concentrated in Guangdong, and perhaps a third
of that is counterfeit. The fakes are exported everywhere--to Europe,
Russia, the Middle East. "Watches are perfect because they are small, easy
to hide and transport, and have high profit margins," says Jack Yang, an
agent with Kroll Associates, the world's largest investigative agency, which
spearheaded the raid in Pinghu.

China's Communist rulers, hoping to join the World Trade Organization next
year, want to appear serious about cracking down on counterfeits. Raids like
the one in Pinghu now occur in many cities, sometimes followed by
orchestrated "destruction parties," in which the seized goods are
steamrollered in the presence of local media. But these actions are barely
stanching the epidemic, estimated by Chinese officials to be a
$16-billion-a-year business and costing foreign firms tens of billions of
dollars annually in lost sales.

China produces more fakes than any other nation--everything from autos to
aircraft parts, beer to blades, soap to shampoo, TVs to toilets. Moreover,
exports of fakes are rising (72% of the counterfeit Beanie Babies seized in
the U.S. last year were from China), and crime syndicates are entering the
racket. "The problem is getting worse rather than better," says David
Holloway

[Sypher]

Very interesting.. so Lajos Xskins are counterfeit..?
Or he/the company just continuing to design their own cases after the split with iSkin? I though the exo was Lajos idea in the first place?..

[GormetSilFwog]

guess not? Their site states that they wanted to make a case for their ipods, not the manufacturer (that I will assume was lajo at the time).

I hate lajos website.. Everytime I visit there I try to find more information bout the company but there's nothing!! I think that's why I trust iSkin.. In my opinion, a company should WANT to provide information so that people like me (who are curious and have a slight trouble making habit) can find out about the product lines..

**Edited due to dislexia.

[peacefroggyac]

I believe Lajo split from iSkin because he wanted to pursue his own ideas in the creation of the cases. I've bought iSkins from Lajo, and I will buy all my future iSkins from Lajo, no matter what ####y ol' iSkin.com has to say about it.

[GormetSilFwog]

*offtopic remark* ooh, another frog. *ribbit*

[iPod Master]

im sure iskin knows bout lajo, so they probably dont care because they havent done anything about it. i prefer iskin.com because their exo2 is the best skin because it was improved from the exo because of what the users asked for. also, the site is MUCH better

[renderboy]

http://www.mann-trading.co.uk/produc...kinwarning.htm
_____


This link is NOT to the official iSkin.com site and doesn't seem to have an active homepage either. I do NOT think this is legitimate.

[GormetSilFwog]

Erm... This isn't an advertisement....

[renderboy]

The owner of this web page link you provided, according to WHOIS database is:
______

Barry Mann
Stirling Way
Churchill Business Center
Borehamwood
WD6 2HP
GB

Registered on:
19-Mar-2003

Updated Last on:
05-Dec-2003
______

Maybe someone in the UK can call this owner and see why he's published this info.

BTW what site did you view that had a link to this. Please provide the linking page to this link so we all can see how you came across this.

[breakaway1029]

By the way, Lajo's new company name is XSKN, not XSKIN, and the new website is either lajo.biz or xskn.com, not iskin.com or xskin.com

[Ebs]

Originally posted by renderboy
The owner of this web page link you provided, according to WHOIS database is:
______

Barry Mann
Stirling Way
Churchill Business Center
Borehamwood
WD6 2HP
GB

Registered on:
19-Mar-2003

Updated Last on:
05-Dec-2003
______

Maybe someone in the UK can call this owner and see why he's published this info.

BTW what site did you view that had a link to this. Please provide the linking page to this link so we all can see how you came across this.

The site is www.everythingipod.co.uk I know this as I just bought a Contour Showcase from them. (ordered yesterday, arrived today!..very nice) if you click on the cases section, you'll see a small warning against 'counterfeit chinese exo's' I had no idea they meant lajo though

I bought an exo case from iSkin.com some time ago, just looked on the back of it and I found this www.iskin.biz and copyright Lajo 04/03 what does the counterfeit case have on it? The www.iskin.biz links to Lajo's site.

[gudge]

I'm no lawyer but how can they be "unauthorized knock-off iSkin eXo 2s" when this guy later states "The Lajo _eXo2 is completely different from iSkin eXo2 as seen on www.iSkin.com." ? To me it seems the only confusing and possibly contentious part is that they both use exo2 in their name.

Just curious

[renderboy]

Originally posted by gudge
I'm no lawyer but how can they be "unauthorized knock-off iSkin eXo 2s" when this guy later states "The Lajo _eXo2 is completely different from iSkin eXo2 as seen on www.iSkin.com." ? To me it seems the only confusing and possibly contentious part is that they both use exo2 in their name.

Just curious

Well, to quote an earlier post in this thread:
"It would be similar to the factory in Asia that makes the iPod breaking away from Apple and selling iPods on their own (Not Kosher)".

And calling it Xpod and the sales site store.Xpple.com

Remind me to find the X-it next time I think about buying a Lajo product.