Portal by Arubixs - an intriguing story

Interesting story.

A company called Arubixs kicked off an Indigogo campaign to raise money to build this:

It is a wearable, bendable smart-watch that provides a large screen. The technology in this thing was pretty hi-tech:

The campaign hit Android Police and they had a scathing article about it - it basically panned about every aspect of the campaign.

I did a bit of digging and on their website their CEO, Brandon Mairs is described as:

Serial entrepreneur with a knack for designing, building and improving products in an array of different industries. Brandon has consulted an array of start-ups with branding packages and PR strategies. He has years of experience in manufacturing with global distribution logistics and is a composite materials expert.

…yet according to his LinkedIn profile he doesn’t seem to have product delivery experience (quote the opposite of building and improving products in an array of different industries).

Now, I just noticed the Indigogo page has gone. I tweeted to them and no response yet. Let’s see what happens…

I am curious to see what is going on with this. Their campaign was a flexible funder, which means all money donated is kept by them (even if they don’t reach their goal). This could bode badly for them if they can’t ship any product and don’t provide refunds.

UPDATE: They respond to my tweet:

https://twitter.com/arubixs/status/516996681875742720
https://twitter.com/arubixs/status/516997011308965888

Classy guy.

Well I just spent the last few minutes sellotaping my phone to my wrist… its sruprisingly ergonomic :wink:

I have a sneaking suspicion that their page was taken down by IGG because of an abuse report or claim that the product won’t ship. I am not sure if this happens…but IGG seems to be up and running (the XPRIZE campaign is up fine), so it is not a site service, which would suggest that either Arubixs took it down or IGG did. Arubixs are saying they didn’t expect it to be down, which would suggest IGG removed it…and abuse is the only thing I think of why they would do this.

The plot thickens…

Also, I invited them on for an interview.

It continues to thicken. They posted this:

Hello everyone,
Yes, we know the IndieGoGo Campaign has been taken down. This was done per IndieGoGo’s terms and conditions as they were notified of an intellectual property complaint. We have just received a copy of this complaint and our attorney’s and legal team are reviewing the information to determine next steps. We have reached out to IndieGogo to resolve this matter and hope to have the campaign relaunched shortly. For full disclosure and transparency, we have attached the said complaint on this page for our backers to review.
Regards,
The Arubixs Team

Here is the complaint: http://www.arubixs.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/notice_of_infringement-arubixs-portal-20140929.pdf

I don’t know why, but something feels weird about all of this.

This Christian Stroetmann seems a little odd. His entire site is full of existing projects re-labelled as his own trademarked terms. I’m ringing the crackpot bell now.

http://www.ontoscope.com/

Engadget cover the story: http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/30/arubixs-indiegogo-hoax/

I guess I’m a sucker for supporting them with $350.00 here are screenshots of me talking with arubixs on Twitter

I was able to get my money back from indiegogo, just to let you all know.

Good to see that.

I also saw this today:

It looks like they are waiting to hear back from the guy who made the IP claim. I suspect this is going to tak quite a while…

I hope this is not some patent troll trying to get money or delay real innovation. It always hurts me at my core when I read stories of people (or companies) using the patent system to stop innovation in order to protect their own interests.

If Arubix was not lying to @mike_erickson1987 this could be the case.