Surviving an attack of the clones

HENN Tan must be having some serious deja vu. The CEO of Trek 2000 International (Trek), of thumbdrive fame, has been nursing another wonder-product since at least 2010.

Called the FluCard, this Secure Digital (SD) memory card allows content to be transferred wirelessly between devices or to the cloud.

But clones from China and Taiwan have been stealing into the market, ripping the FluCard off as others did with Trek's thumbdrive almost two decades ago.

This is where the deja vu ends, however. Last week, Mr Tan flew to Japan for a meeting with Toshiba - which has a stake in Trek - and formed a long-term plan for a clone-smackdown.

"We were talking about how we're going to prevent these clones from eating my (lunch), the …