[asterisk-biz] Knockoff TDM400 Cards - What's the Deal?

[alex at pilosoft.com]

On Tue, 28 Feb 2006, Rusty Dekema wrote:

> > It sounds like you know the answer already.
> 
> Sorry, you've got the wrong idea. I don't play games of that sort. If I
> knew the answer, I wouldn't have asked the question. I'm not trying to
> seek anyone's moral approval of the idea of buying these cards whether
> or not they violate Digium's US IP rights. I simply want to know whether
> or not the cards do indeed violate those rights.
Yes, in my non-lawyer answer.

> Yes, it seems reasonable to suspect that no-one besides Digium makes
> these cards in the US because doing so would be illegal. That's why I
> asked the question. But, it strikes me as just as reasonable to suspect
> that Digium already manufactures their cards in an efficient manner,
> that no US company can do so in a significantly cheaper manner, and that
> that is why no-one in the US makes such knockoffs.
No, those cards are 90% profit to digium. For a chiwanese company, it 
would be 99% profit. 

> If, for example, Digium designed the TDM400 cards using designs from
> "open" reference schematics (like Zapata Telephony's T1 cards, except
> for POTS), then another company could quite conceivably decide to
> manufacture a similar card based on the same reference design. Again, I
> don't know whether something like this happened or not; that's why I
> asked.
No, TDM400 cards are Digium original design.

-alex