But, it doesn't really matter, some Chinese guys saw they could make few dollars by knocking off my PCB, making it cheaper, using cheaper components, and copying my code. It's not like it was a $40,000,000 product line.
I tell people it's how I know I'm not completely shit. That the Chinese thought it good enough to clone/steal. It's how I know I've made it.
Just saw that you had few posts telling that you lived in Malaysia, and thought that you may be somebody I know.
> some Chinese guys saw they could make few dollars by knocking off my PCB, making it cheaper, using cheaper components
Why not to copy their design?
My dad told me, that, ‘character’ is just the things you do when no one is looking.
So how much can you have when you tell the world you are a cheat?
Basically I think the rule is don't even consider legal action unless you would be happy to dump $500,000 on it. We make much more than that on my product but for a variety of reasons wouldn't go down that route.
Longer answer on prevention is that if you're making a "dumb" device today, expect no reasonable protections if your price point keeps you in a standard microcontroller range. So, if you're using anything from PIC/AVR to Cortex M7, assume you will give firmware away somehow. In our case, the next product is BLE connected and will self-authenticate via our server, we looked at PSK and PKI, and found a way to do it cost effectively because of a unique scenario that it has to mate up to the part number on another product. Basically I can just watch the database for mismatched pairs and ban them from being used. Not perfect, and someone could make one bad unit for themselves, but not thousands.