When you have hundreds of hours and considerable dollars in a design then someone comes along and copies all of your work, no failed designs or hours of prototyping then maybe you would understand. Then again, you probably thought you deserved to charge what you did for cigars when people could go down to the corner and buy a cigar for about a dollar. Nothing special about your cigars. Tobacco rolled in a tube and full of short cut tobacco for both cigars. You must have been ripping people off, tobacco is tobacco, right???
Two people paint pictures. One picture sells for $30.00, the other for $30,000. Both are oil on canvas, the material costs are the same. Probably not a lot of difference in time to paint them either. Seems certain that the person that had the talent and training to sell a picture for 30,000 is ripping people off, two blocks down on the left they can buy the $30.00 picture.
That was the conclusion I came to. Working in R&D it seemed like everyone around me had patents. My friend and partner had over eighty patents to his name. He made money off of two of those patents!
Another friend invented an industrial pump. He sold the US rights to manufacture and market the pump for four million dollars. A delegation came over from japan. "We will give you forty thousand for all overseas rights. Otherwise we will give you nothing and make the pump anyway. You will have to file any claims of intellectual theft in japan." japanese courts were noted for being hostile to overseas parties and almost automatically ruled for the japanese entity. My friend could piss away the four million trying to defend his patent, take the forty thousand, or stick his toes in and tell the company to go pound sand.
He had never touched the four million, just banked it. After giving it some thought and looking into the situation he took the forty thousand, little skinny pecker and all. Mr Leon knew he was getting screwed but the choices were to take it on the chin and get nothing or take it on the chin and get forty thousand. Even in the eighties that was a very raw deal.
john, an appropriate name if there ever was one! You are the one that brought an ancient thread back to life. I can't remember the last time I gave you a thought, much less posted about you. There is a big difference between looking at other designs to see how they work and proudly copying them, something you brag about doing and have bragged about over and over. You are living proof that those that can't innovate imitate. After almost thirty years maybe you or some of the ladies in your shop have designed something. Not what your business was based on, according to your own claims!
Anyone that can innovate hates to see out and out ripoffs. You are proud that you did! Now you whine about your designs being copied, but is it your design being copied or the person you took the design features from. Hard to deny your activity when you brag about taking features in this very thread!
You can spin fantasies as long as you want. Anyone that can read can figure out who did what if they cared enough to do it. Most of us quit caring other than for the entertainment you provide. When I was toddler I had a little rooster that would fluff up and fight with anything, even flowers and such. I think you would be hard to tell apart if you dyed your hair bright red.
Don't sugar coat things tell it like it is! Anyway, most of what john says isn't really lies, wouldn't cause a blip on a lie detector. They are more the natural outcome of his own unique perspective. he can be ninety even one hundred eighty degrees off from everyone else but with his perspective he is always the victim and the one attacked. Easy enough to see what time of morning john revived this old thread.
I was wondering what I was going to do today anyway. This old humor is pretty priceless to reread.
Hu