Originally Posted by
Derek Cohen
Mike, you and I are not going to agree on this one. And I am not about to try and convert you to my way of thinking.
I will comment about your statement, "If you really believe in that perspective you should have the same attitude towards all products that copy another manufacturer's product. But that would mean you would would have a very small set of products that you could purchase. "
There is nothing in what I have written about that should suggest that copying, per se, is verboten. Only copying without permission is verboten. There is also no argument against taking an idea of another and improving it. Many of the tools we use have the footprint of others. I'd say that the Taylor gauge is more than a footprint.
Regards from Perth
Derek
I can agree with you if the phrase is "Only copying protected intellectual property without permission is verboten."
Or put another way, "There's nothing wrong with using intellectual property which is in the public domain."
Mike
[The problem with your statement is that it's way too broad and doesn't give guidance to anyone who wished to implement it. If using ANY intellectual property required getting permission from the inventor it would be almost impossible to build anything new. One person, who just didn't want to give permission (even though the intellectual property was in the public domain) could prevent someone from building a product that included that intellectual property. That's very bad public policy and certainly does nothing good for the consumer.]
[Additionally, what is the definition of "improving" a product? LN certainly copied the Stanley planes and you may say that by making them to greater tolerances that LN improved the planes. How about if someone copied the LN planes and found a way to manufacture them for a lower price so that they could be sold at a lower price? Is that an improvement? I submit it is because the consumer benefits from that.
So who's to decide what an improvement is? If you ask the company making the product they will certainly say that they improved the product and will give you a list of improvements.
On the other hand, the term "protected intellectual property" has been well defined through many court cases.]
Last edited by Mike Henderson; 04-20-2017 at 1:29 PM.
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