Boycott Traxxas - RC Groups (2024)

wait... what... why on earth would anyone ever want to boycott one of the largest most influential R/C companies on the planet???

Let's take a step back in time to see where Traxxas was founded back in 1986 by Jim Jenkins and David Katz. Traxxas is credited for introducing the concept of a RTR and bringing the Short Course class into R/C among many other cool concepts.
http://www.rcdriver.com/6-things-you...nies-you-know/

In contrast of amazing contributions that Traxxas has made in growing the industry, they have grown into a completely different company from what they once were and have morphed into a "Patent Troll" who is focused on destroying their competition which is now killing the industry as we know it. So what is the definition of a patent troll and what sorts of things has Traxxas done to categorize them this way, I've highlighted key actions that Traxxas is guilty of doing here:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/patent-troll.asp

1) Baseless Claims - I need to do more research because Traxxas has filed too many baseless claims to keep track of them all, but I will point out 2 key events that have dramatically impacted the industry. First was around 2014 when Traxxas sued HPI for patent infringement by using a rubber seal to copy their idea for a "waterproof Rx box". Keep in mind that HPI legally reverse engineered the design and came up with a new shape/geometry with no direct copy molds. In theory this case should've been thrown out of court, but I'll explain why this didn't happen in a little bit. There's no definitive proof that this lawsuit was a direct or indirect cause, but HPI would go bankrupt and was chopped up into multiple pieces and sold off to multiple buyers around 2016. HPI never fully recovered with roughly 3/4 of their product line discontinued. Then later in 2016, Traxxas did it again but to ARRMA with a lawsuit over cantilever style suspension where ARRMA legally reverse engineered a new geometry... and by 2018, ARRMA, along with dozens of other companies who rolled up under Hobbico would go bankrupt and ultimately get chopped up and sold to multiple buyers. This time things were far worse, instead of just discontinuing majorities of product lines, there were complete brands that were shut down.

2) Buying a patent - It would be one thing if Traxxas was truly the first to innovate a concept that has never before been seen, but rubber seals and cantilever shocks have been used in the automotive industry for decades. It really makes no sense that they would buy patents for something they didn't invent themselves unless their only intention was to bully their competitors. Yes this is legal, but I personally feel that it's not ethical where we are seeing more harm than good come from it.

3) Solely enforce patent rights - this one is kinda self explanatory, don't get me wrong, I have seen some "direct copy/clones" of Traxxas products from manufacturers over seas which IMO are blatant IP theft, and in those cases, I fully support Traxxas in protecting their designs. That's really the purpose of patent law provided it's not being abused, which leads right into the final straw.

4) Venue Shopping - Traxxas filed their cases in a part of Texas that is well known to have a judge who notoriously finds in favor of the plaintiff and 45% of all patent cases in the US were filed in this region during this time period. This explains the bias of why none of these cases were ever thrown out of court, the judge had specialized in hearing patent cases which suggests corruption all the way around with Traxxas taking full advantage of the system to effectively obliterate their competition. The Supreme Court has since fixed this problem and going forward, all new patent cases must be heard within the defendants jurisdiction which now takes away the "home field advantage" and levels the playing field so defendants will have a fighting chance to actually defend themselves within reason.

Some will say that everything that Traxxas has done was perfectly legal and they were well within their legal rights, BUT that's where I feel Traxxas needs to own up for what they did... they caused so much collateral damage that our industry isn't anything like it once was. What I see is Traxxas attempting to monopolize the market, and stifle innovation by abusing patent law beyond what it was intended for. Here's the kicker, Traxxas is just as guilty as copying other peoples designs making them a hypocrisy!