The same thing happens to you if you design original products. We designed a variety of products, had them manufactured and shipped to the US, and fulfilled them ourselves. The fine counterfeiters our manufacturers illegally sold the designs to have made literal millions selling our designs on Amazon and we have moved on.
You surrendered your IP doing that, effectively, correct?
This is not new. A decade ago I heard about chinese factories doing runs above and beyond the manufacturing they did for a company to sell through "other channels".
And that's how "Shimano" products were dirt cheap in Europe for about five years.
> You surrendered your IP doing that, effectively, correct?
Sure, in the same sense that we would have by manufacturing them things ourselves using raw materials we harvested ourselves and then selling them online where anyone could buy them and take them apart?
Enticed by cheap labor, you handed your intellectual property to them on a silver platter and they made full use of it to undercut you and sell to your customers directly. Chinese manufacturers have been doing this for decades.
