hey there friends it's Devin here with Make Anything and well today I've got a less fun
video than usual but a video I feel compelled to make nonetheless it's something that a lot
of people have been reaching out to me about and I think it's also a valuable learning opportunity
so here are my thoughts on the Torshn puzzle Kickstarter and claims that it's a knockoff of my
Astrolabicon puzzle from three years earlier to be clear I'm not making any formal accusations here
but I really felt the need to share my perspective so with that said let's take a look back
to March 24th about a month ago when I first received an email from Liem at torshndesign.com
you've got mail
hi Devin my name's Liem and I love combination puzzles my friends and I have all seen what's
been done with sphericons in the past couple of years and wanted to explore the shape because we
thought it would make a great Orb puzzle remake then we came across your Astrolabicon puzzle and
you had made almost exactly what we were thinking we decided to go balls to the walls and make one
out of solid aluminum and put our own spin on the shape we loved the magnetic system that you used
because it's so robust nothing can really break and it'll last virtually forever it was super hard
to develop a process that could carve the cavities but I think it turned out amazing we're planning
on doing a kickstarter to help us do a production run of them and we'd love to send you one if
you're interested not looking for a review or anything just wanted to share it with you let me
know smiley face love your 3D printing mission by the way exclamation point exclamation point best,
Liem now parts of this email might come off as genuine on their own but upon looking into this
Kickstarter campaign I couldn't help but read it as a thinly veiled attempt to flatter me into
submission as this mysterious design team uses nearly every element of my Astrolabicon puzzle
for their own puzzle but let's take a closer look and you can form your own opinions so here's
the Kickstarter page for the Torshn puzzle "a unique combination puzzle that tickles the mind"
well first there's the video which I'll admit it's shot very well it
shows a few folks solving the puzzle and then there's this view of the puzzle being solved
and here's a video of mine from three years earlier just for comparison
then they talk about how much they've struggled for a year to design this puzzle and oh look they
use Fusion 360 too then we've got their story full of lovely renders and an explanation of
the objective of their puzzle which almost seems interchangeable with that of the Astrolabicon
"align the colors to each other by sliding the marbles and twisting the halves solving the puzzle
may initially seem straightforward but you'll quickly find that it's trickier than it looks"
whereas my store listing reads "twist the two halves of the Astrolabicon puzzle and
shift marbles to rearrange them until all like colored marbles are touching it sounds
easy until you realize that each twist changes the behavior of the marble track"
scroll scroll scroll and there's a bunch of fluff about how great their puzzle is and that it
belongs in a museum and then they go on to talk about their greatest inspiration for this project
the awesome Orb puzzle invented by Christopher C Wiggs and Christopher J Taylor in 1981
now you don't have to believe me but I actually hadn't seen this puzzle when I designed my version
of the Astrolabicon so I will readily admit that coincidences and similarities between
designs happen all the time in fact a bigger coincidence was that user u/davidthewalkerx
posted a much more similar concept on Reddit just around the same time David was inspired by the
Maker's Muse video about sphericons that was also released in the Summer of 2018 and in that video
Angus graciously teases my upcoming video about sphericons and the Astrolabicon because it was
something we discussed in our Twitter DMs once we realized that we were working on similar videos
in fact in the video where I first shared the Astrolabicon I also showed David's version and I
also mentioned the Astrolabacus which was designed in 1997 by John D Harris so yes we were all
working on similar designs around the same time but in my honest opinion the Torshn puzzle and
the Astrolabicon are more than just similar to the point where I've been receiving literally hundreds
of DMs, comments, emails, messages and so on about how someone is using my design on Kickstarter
so here's my Astrolabicon and here's, well, a version of my Astrolabicon that I modified to
look more like the Torshn puzzle I really didn't have to change much because I could
use most of the same measurements and the way I see it this is like a Rubik's cube 2x2 to my 3x3
my puzzle is based on a six sided sphericon it's held together with an array of six magnets and a
central pin so that it snaps into its different positions the torsion puzzle is based on
a four-sided sphericon so it has four magnets in a similar array around the central pin for
the same function my original Astrolabicon used these green, blue, red, and yellow glass marbles
six of each whereas the Torshn puzzle uses the same exact marbles just half as many and
the mechanism for solving both puzzles is pretty much the same
mine's just a little more challenging because it has more marbles see it's frustrating because
I generally don't mind if people take elements from my designs in fact it's one of my greatest
motivations for sharing all my stuff here on Make Anything I want to provide inspiring content
for people to build off of but in this case where so many people are confusing the Torshn puzzle
for mine and thinking that I must be involved that's where I find it too close for comfort
so looping back to that email well I still gave Liem some benefit of the doubt but I was also
very straightforward about my concerns I wrote hi Liem thank you for reaching out your manufacturing
technique is impressive and the puzzle looks great but I'll be honest the Torshn puzzle looks like a
direct copy of my Astrolabicon aesthetically I don't own the rights to this type of puzzle
but the styling of your puzzle could be mistaken as one of mine far too easily to the point where I
see it as an infringement of my design I wish you would have approached me earlier about a licensing
agreement or otherwise made a more transformative change to the look of the puzzle I'm all about
encouraging creativity and making but I think it's been done a bit irresponsibly in this case
I hope you'll consider making changes before selling this puzzle to distinguish it from my
own twisty puzzles sorry for being a snob but I do value the protection of intellectual property
so I'm being upfront with you and under other circumstances I'd consider working together to
produce the Astrolabicon since you seem to have solid manufacturing abilities and also operate in
California anyways let me know your thoughts I'm open to discussion best regards Devin to that Liem
responded with apparent shock that I would even consider our puzzle similar besides both puzzles
are similar to this Orb puzzle from the 80s' and they used the sphericon in a "very different way"
again I stuck to my opinion I brought up all the similarities and I hoped to compromise
by suggesting a design change to their puzzle so it's more distinguishable from mine or otherwise
compensating me for my design decisions if they were to continue using them here's the thing
no I didn't spend the thousands of dollars to file a design patent on this puzzle
as someone who's working on my own and constantly sharing my designs on youtube
it would be prohibitively expensive and time consuming for me to do that for all of my designs
I did try to make a case about my legal rights to this design but I honestly don't want to be
involved in legal battles so I generally don't patent things like this I'd rather just trust in
the goodness of people and hope that designers would rather create unique products so that's
on me anyways Liem responded again insisting that their puzzle looks dramatically different
and going back to that Orb puzzle but look at these puzzles and tell me how my Astrolabicon
doesn't look more like one than the other that these are all equally similar then less than
a week later I received a letter from a lawyer representing "the makers of the Torshn puzzle"
which sought to refute the claims I made in my emails admittedly he was accurate to say that
I couldn't really do much about the mechanical features of the puzzle without patents that's
how US law works so there's a lesson for me that said I wouldn't say he made the strongest argument
to my claim that these designs don't appear substantially different as creative works and
therefore violate my copyright in the letter he puts a few photos of the two puzzles side by side
but, well, I just don't think he used the right photos here's a few examples for a start
and again I've had so many people reaching out to me mistaking the Torshn puzzle for my design
anyways let's continue down their Kickstarter page the next section talks about their decision
to ditch evil plastic and use aluminum to be ultra sustainable and create a product that lasts
forever while also citing a webpage that says toys are only used for six months on average so
that's kind of a conflicting message and believe me I'm very aware of the negative impacts of our
society's rampant use of plastics I'm not trying to defend that but I do have a feeling that this
mostly hollow PLA puzzle 3D printed at home with just 30 grams of material might actually have less
negative environmental impact compared to a solid block of aluminum carved on a giant CNC mill,
anodized, sandblasted and shipped across the world they also tout the near infinite recyclability of
aluminum but never actually claimed to be making the puzzles from recycled metal now
determining the actual environmental impact of a product from cradle to grave requires a
pretty thorough life cycle analysis and that's not really the point of this particular video
so all I'll say is that it's not necessarily as clear-cut as it seems finally there's this
section about Torshn design group who we are that's a good question they say they're a small
group of tinkerers from Oakland, California who were tired of working on other people's projects
they want you to support designers who are "truly passionate about the product they build"
and fight "unsustainable conglomerates" by "helping small creators bring their ideas to life"
that might be the most insulting part of this whole thing to me
these folks share a timeline that starts the same year that I shared my puzzle
they were inspired by my design in what seems like just about every way and yet they didn't
think to contact me for three years until just a few days before launching their campaign
and speaking of that Torshn design joined Kickstarter just this year
they anonymously registered their domain in March to create this sparse webpage that gives no names
no physical address or much of anything and even their attorney's letter doesn't reveal anything
about their "client" on Kickstarter they promise to be 100% transparent but that's just not what
I'm seeing I literally don't know the faces behind this project I've also been told that several
Kickstarter comments bringing up the similarity between our puzzles have been deleted though they
did keep up one statement from April 14th in it they continue to insist that their puzzle
was designed independently and they reached out to me about sharing my content with no response
well I've already shared my email response from nearly three weeks before that comment
so that's just not true maybe they meant to say that they didn't get the response they wanted
and again I could totally accept the coincidence of them deciding to make a sphericon puzzle before
seeing my Astrolabicon but I have serious doubts that it would look and function as it does now
without taking most of their design cues from my puzzle and to top it off their ads are now
running on my YouTube videos and targeting you fortunately I've been able to seek advice from
an excellent attorney who also taught at Art Center College where I studied Product Design
and while I may have a legitimate copyright case here I didn't formally register my work
so it wouldn't be such a straightforward thing and again I'm not really interested in legal battles
I was really just hoping to have an honest conversation with these folks
but all I've sensed is feigned ignorance and unwillingness to compromise so with that I decided
to make this video so I could at least share my personal thoughts on the matter and I'm also
interested in hearing other opinions so if you have your own perspective please share it in the
comments and maybe share this video if you think it's valuable I would hope that people backing
this campaign at least hear my side of the story well that's about it so if you want to support
this small creator you can download and print your own Astrolabicon puzzle at MyMiniFactory.com
this version is available for free and I also sell limited physical prints at DevinMontes.com
or if you just want to support the channel you can do that by visiting patreon.com/MakeAnything
more than anything I'm just grateful to all of you for hearing me out and standing up for what you
think is right and well I'm really excited to get back to actually making things and sharing them
here on make anything so if that's something you want to be a part of please consider subscribing
and stay tuned but that's it for today so until then take care and as always stay inspired