Actually, yes. China's government is very protective of ensuring that buyers are getting what they pay for, because the gov't doesn't want to upset the goose that's laying a Fort Knox worth of golden eggs in their country. The Chinese government knows exactly which side its bread is buttered on.

Chinese manufacturer management personnel who've done this sort of thing in the past with food products have been fucking executed, so don't for a minute think that there's no teeth to such an indemnification.

Not at all. It's completely accurate. The chip is still very capable of performing the task it was designed and marketed to do.

Someone just needs to write a driver that will talk to it, and it can happily do it.

Then you control your own manufacturing. Lots of companies do that very thing. Or they have very strict contracts with their manufacturers to lay the financial burden at their feet if there is parts-swapping happening.

Reputable manufacturers solve this problem every day. It's the cheap-ass folks trying to go on volume versus quality that have the problems.

But in this case, the manufacturer didn't choose that 0x0403. The USB working group did.

And - as discussed elsewhere in this thread - reputable manufacturers have means of holding their suppliers accountable, both in terms of QCing products they source, and in terms of indemnification for defective merchandise.

No, I think that about covers it.

If Company A isn't demanding test-samples from every shift-run, they're doing their QC wrong. That's just CODB.

If that's happening, I sue the bejeezus out of the factory worker. Or I decide "the risk isn't worth it", and control my own manufacturing.

There are solutions to all these problems. They may cost more up-front, but that's -- again -- the market normalizing itself as it weeds out the cancer of fraud.

They work.

There's just no driver for them.

No, they moved it to "0" ie, unassigned.

If you don't understand why you'd care about ensuring that you're using quality components rather than cheaply made knock-off fakes, remind me never to put you in charge of my supply chain.

Buy direct. They sell direct. Most chipmakers do.

The T&C are there. If you've decided to automatically accept updates without reading the T&C you're agreeing to, well, that's your own bad legal judgement.

And -- in this case -- the T&C specifically say that they "may" break counterfeit hardware.

If you've created an "open invitation" for them to come into your house (ie, unattended automatic updates) whenever they want, that's your own look-out.

Unless they wish to claim that "0x0403" is entitled for trademark protection, the driver is hardly in a position to distinguish between the two.

They could make an argument that "0x0403" is a reference to the "FTDI" identifier, which is trademarked, and so they are claiming (to hardware and anyone who talks to it directly) that they *are* made by the vendor 0x0403/FTDI. At which point, it's a textbook trademark dilution matter.