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Joined the blade gang. Buying a True shaft and ABS blade for some fun at the ball hockey rink by my house.

I think you are spot on...original JetSpeed with FT4 graphics

I was reading while mobile and confused one of your replies with another persons.... or maybe I spent too much time today doing stuff with epoxy and got a little tipsy. Ha!

Canada and the US tend to respect one another's patents even though legally there is a grey area there. That being said, if you are in North America it's a terrible decision to infringe on parents and not to expect to be sued. In many parts of Asia you can get away with it. Europe, depends on the country. Eastern Europe you are probably fine but Western Europe you are likely going to be in some trouble.

Patents would be contested in whatever court has jurisdiction. Some countries have agreements so that you don’t have to file in a hundreds of countries. I do not know all the details of those arrangements, pretty much limited to what I know from some of my experiences with patent stuff with work. This is one of the big gripes the US has with China and some other places whose governments don’t enforce IP. We used to have people knocking off disposable parts of medical devices. They were so efficient they would occasionally get shut down and pop back up within weeks.

They probably know their customer to the extent that they know exactly how many people request other holders vs. just going with theirs, which we don't. Product managers make decisions like this day in and day out that will piss off some people but since they should know their business, don't have any effect on their overall success. I am constantly getting feedback from people internal and external about what I should do with my products, many/most of them don't have the big picture.

The first generation steel had a larger window which was later changed due to breakage. I have not seen any of the updated steel break.

For something like you should have the retailer request that they ship the boots undrilled with the holder and steel. If you hadn't requested that they drill holes for tuuks there is no way they can know that you aren't planning on using the shift holders. You can just say that you prefer to have your local pro shop mount them to your specs of they ask. I don't see what you gain by having True drill the holes for you instead of just having whoever is mounting the tuuks just do it. While I agree, the fact is that True used to do it and stopped. While I get that now they are pushing their own holder, it doesn't change the fact that they have many returning customers who had this done in the past and are going to be unhappy that they are now being forced into using the shift holders. Frankly, I think it was foolish of True to make their holder completely unlike the tuuks. CCM was smart by making their XS holder play very similar to tuuks, and True would have been wise to do the same. Then nobody would have cared very much, except Bauer. But there's obviously ways to avoid any infringement on ip while still creating a similar style holder. But the shift holder is totally different and requires a lot of adjustment, and they're asking people for a lot more loyalty than people might have, which will only hurt True.

I've used almost all of them and IMO, the Bauer Vapor 1X is the best knee pad on the market (thanks to @Hills for the recommendation). Passau stays up the best, is the most stable, and is pretty protective, but they're huge and heavy and have very little padding in the landing area. With the Maltese insert to fix that they are even heavier and bulkier. Warriors have the most padding in the landing area and are pretty light. But all that padding is soft and leads to instability in the butterfly and the protection isn't great, especially in the "SR" version that comes with the pads. Plus, I found them impossible to keep from sliding down without both taping and wearing socks over. Maltese KTPs were pretty much terrible in every way, except possibly the comfort in landing. I'm not a fan of the design of Brian's knees (which are similar to the Supremes). They're too rigid and enclosed around the knee. The 1X's are the lightest (thanks to the Aerolite foam and Curv knee plate) and probably the second most protective behind the Passau (again thanks Curv). They stay up on their own pretty well but come with a garter that really holds them up without noticing it. They're pretty cushioned and comfortable while also being stable in the butterfly (inbewteen the Passau and Warrios on both those spectrums). And they aren't bulky or restrictive feeling at all.

Looks like 2 upper eyelets, so probably Comps, the original model.

I've been back out there since June. For my New Hampshire league, the only difference is I wear a mask on the way in and out of the rink. For my Massachusetts league, they still won't let us use the lockerrooms so we show up half dressed or at least already in our base layers and finish dressing around the rink. That is really getting old, especially doing the full change after in a nice cold rink.