Why All Golf Brands Copy Eachother

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this is the Lab Golf DF3 probably the most famous and most infamous putter online over the last few years for its wild shape and surprisingly appealing results and this is the Odyssey clone that’s been taking over the PGA Tour in the last few weeks and this is the Tailor Made Zero Torque and this is the PXG Allen ZT and this is the rumored Scotty Cameron ZT all of these companies have jumped on the bandwagon of these zero torque putters all because Lab brought it into the mainstream but how were they able to get away with so blatantly copying allegedly Lab’s own technology well it turns out this is basically exactly what golf brands have been doing for over a century and Lab are probably going to have a tough time doing anything about it all right so if you’re watching this video there’s a good chance you’ve heard a thing or two about Lab Golf over the past few years it’s a relatively new golf brand making putters that are made to stay square to your path no matter how you swing the club or what your lie angle is and they made great strides recently by going global on social media in a way we see from only few brands but then even recently they’ve gone even further forward with JJ Spawn winning the 2025 US Open in rather epic fashion by drilling a 64 ft putt on 18 to win with his Lab Golf DF3 and yes a lot of people call them very ugly and they’re definitely different but you can’t deny that they have been getting a lot of people results however it’s with those results that came a decent amount of sales and attention and that has helped Lab grow a lot but also likely taken a lot of sales away from specifically brands that are used to selling high forgivenessesque putters like Callaway through Odyssey and Tailor Made with their spiders and so naturally they among a few notable others decided to find a way to break into this new burgeoning putter market with their own labesque products bxg actually did this a while ago when they dropped their zero torque model they’ve never been that big of a putter retailer and their prices are pretty much in line with labs so I don’t really think they ever took that much business away from the new company however Callaway always ready to take a big jump for their business as they have done countless times with the likes of Topgolf especially well they did it a little bit differently with quite a shocking result but before we get into this is the new AI1 square to square Max Stripe putter by Odyssey by Callaway what a name guys really great name guys keep it up well done but oh my gosh if it isn’t the clearest of any putter made that it is a direct allegedly in my opinion copy of the Lab Golf DF3 and it’s good too i’ve seen a lot of the good you guys that were recently using Lab putters switch over to it and with it coming in at $400 still a lot of money for a putter but $50 less than Labs not custom models and being from a more story brand one that golfers are going to be more used to in Odyssey well it makes for a pretty appealing package especially when it feels like it’s pitched as the same thing and that begs the question how the hell are they able to get around it and pitch the same thing we hear all this talk about patents and new technology protections with Lab even making their patents public on their website or a few of them at least and I’m not going to pretend to be an IP lawyer in this video but I do know that patents aren’t treated as a law no one’s really policing them and are only enforcable in court which means that unless Lab sues Callaway or or Tailor Made or any of these guys well they can really do anything they want but even if they do take the litigation route that doesn’t mean they’ll win lawsuits can be very long journeys especially one with brands as capital heavy as Callaway Titleist or Tailor made and you can even lose those patents in the process if appeals are made with the proper board where they deem your product not significantly different than what’s already available and considering all of these products are just made to hit a little ball on the ground well I can see where that argument comes from that’s also part of the reason that all these new putters are listed as zero torque that’s not necessarily what Lab is pushing as their name literally stands for lie angle balance and that naming scheme along with the technology itself is probably a form of efficient infringement a term in the legal industry for getting around a patent in a way that the potential benefits outweigh the potential costs of doing so and honestly there’s been a very long history of that in the golf world like Kirkland Signature Irons copying the insert from the original P790s Nike popularizing the square driver after Acuiform Golf did it decades earlier and even Pinger being copied by pretty much every putter brand back in the day and honestly still today but all of these show that there could be incredible profits or opportunities not what we are told in business classes and school that you always want to be the first to the market but instead in that you can wait for others to develop the product and then if positioned correctly well you can be the one to really profit long term i was able to find a few news clippings of court cases from back in the day of patent infringement occurring in the golf industry and actually being executed upon at least of the few I was able to find it was usually one of the very large golf companies ending up taking down a smaller company’s product or a battle between the biggest golf brands at the time who had money to throw at the subject and Lab doesn’t necessarily strike me as a company in that position yet and though I believe they’ve protected a few of their products attributes pretty well that haven’t been able to be replicated yet specifically the forward press grip I just don’t know if that’s enough necessarily however that’s not really the end of the story here because I don’t imagine that those Tailormaids and Odysseies will ever be able to offer the adjustable and customizability that Lab is with their putters because of their smaller manufacturing team and setup tailor Made and Callaway are definitely not going to offer a billion different colors and alignment lines and especially lie angles with online fittings and things like that which is a very cool option considering a lot of people probably myself included at the time never really consider getting fit for the flat stick and all that does make Lab feel like a comforting boutique brand creating top-of-the-line equipment in one area of the golf world that hasn’t really felt that much of a ripple like this in a very very long time and I don’t think that’s threatened by the fact that these major manufacturers now will have a similarly enough product for most golfers and I do think competition is good especially for consumers a lot of my videos are all about making golf affordable and approachable for as many people as possible especially in a world that’s becoming more and more expensive and competition like this will let people try out this tech and now we’ve even got Scotty Cameron pushing the zero torque craze though that’s probably only going to be for their tour players and it doesn’t seem like they have plans to make that public and that’s cool to see i wouldn’t even be surprised if Cleveland comes out with a great zero torque putter in a year or so that’s very affordable just like they replicated Scotty’s in the past or like the Rossy has been remade for years and years by pretty much every brand having to take something from that legendary design including lab with their oz now we’ve seen brands fold under pressure like this from major manufacturers and of course they do as those bigger places can just produce and produce and undercut and undercut until the smaller guys are squeezed out Most of the time those brands don’t have a cult following like Lab does and definitely didn’t have the social media presence they do which should help them get through this in one way or another i also believe in Lab Golf’s leadership and I think they have a really cool mission and idea and plan for the things that they make but I don’t think any of this is really a bad thing at least for me and for you guys as well but it will create a very interesting period for Lab Golf so keep an eye on them because I’m sure they’re cooking up something special to counteract all of this but thank you guys for watching if you enjoyed this video go jump on over to this one about the rise of Lab Golf or this one about the rise of the Titalist Prov1 because it’s kind of weird but thank you guys for watching and I’ll see you in the next one peace