I must have missed something wasn't Jasper Meeks the inventor of the leather tooled case that you and Jack Justice made similar copies of with a little change here and there , also you are now making copies of Fanneli cases , the only difference in the cases I see is really the change in material still similar design as leather cases ,
I don't see really how you have a case pardon the pun , plenty of things are copied the list is endless very rare the originator wins a case in court
1
No, Jay Flowers was not the originator of the tooled leather case. There were many before him doing tooled leather cases. He was the first to MARKET a tooled leather case in that style. Dennis Swift was making cases before him.
I don't make copies of any case. IF I ever make a version of any style that was being made before I came along then I give credit to those who came before me and I make improvements to the style so that my addition to the genre is better than what came before.
A knockoff is simply a crappy version of something else. Any praise it gets is BECAUSE someone else came up with the look and the knockoff adopts the look but cuts corners and doesn't adopt the quality.
Any person with eyes can see that the cases MH brought out are KNOCKOFFS of JB Cases. Now that said, there is no law in the USA that says you cannot copy the look of something else. It's perfectly legal to make knockoffs within certain parameters.
It is NOT legal to lie about those knockoffs with false advertising in order to attempt to make consumers believe that they are as good as the original if they are provably inferior.
I don't have any problem with knockoffs. For 29 years I have been coming up with designs which have all been knocked off. Some of the knockoffs are so ridiculous that you would have to see it to appreciate the hilarity. I am at the point the most copied case maker ever in my opinion.
And yes there are elements from other cases in my cases. Just like there are elements in every cue that were present in something that came before. But we all understand quite well when something new comes along that no one did before, when someone takes those elements and reshapes them, redefines them, makes a new design that supercedes all that came before. And we understand when someone comes after that and knocks off that design.
Someone here mentioned the argument I had with Jack. Do any of you even remember what it was about? I don't think so.
Some person posted up a case that was a mashup of a Justis and an Instroke and was bragging about how happy they were. That person was then criticized for getting a knockoff of a Justis. Jack chimed in and asked if anyone had information on the maker.
I said, in that thread, that I thought it was crazy to see so many people going off about the Instroke/Justis mashup when not a single word was said about the Whitten knockoffs. (And STILL you all don't mention the abundance of dead nuts Whitten knockoffs out there). I wrote a bit about knockoffs and original design and what was what.
Someone sent jack a private message containing a private message between myself and a dealer 8 MONTHS prior, where the dealer was asking about vinyl knockoffs of Justis cases and if he could get them from us. Rather than tell that dealer that the knockoffs were already available through J&J, I said that maybe we (Sterling Gaming) might bring them in sometime in the future but for the time being he could get good cases from Sterling Gaming.
Jack then posted that message in a thread called Design Thief Exposed. And many of you gleefully jumped on that bandwagon accusing me of stealing Jack's designs even though I had NOTHING to do with the mashup that started the "hunt" nor was I making or importing the then and still EXISTING vinyl knockoffs of Justis cases sold by J&J.
Point being that you can HATE on me all you want but the truth is that all I have ever done in this business is make and deliver BETTER cases than what existed before I started making cases. And now I continue to deliver cases that are better than what is out there. How does one do this? By studying everything out there and taking what works and leaving the rest. By doing small improvements CONSTANTLY. By listening to needs and finding solutions.
A pool cue case isn't about appearance. It is a tool that should be designed from the inside out for PROTECTION first and utility and durability and comfort. Those of you who think it's about appearance deserve to get crap knockoffs that can damage your cue.
I sat in a showroom in China, the same one Jack sat in, surrounded by 40 years of case making represented in all of the knockoffs of every major case design. Basically 40 years of flat out ripping off original work by creating poor quality knockoffs. And you all ate them up. Did you support Joe Porper or did you own a knockoff? I will bet that almost every one of you bought and owned a knockoff of a Porper case at some point. Where are your tears for Joe?
But wait, did Joe originate the foam core case or was it Bob Meucci? How about Ron Thomas, did he originate the styles he made or did he use styles that others were doing before him? Where is your criticism?
The criticism is reserved 100% for me because I dared to speak up on these topics. Any maker that doesn't make waves is considered to be "good" and any maker that stands up and says the truth is considered to be a troublemaker and one which needs to be disciplined.
That's exactly how it is. The way I see it you all would rather be lied to and have your egos stroked instead of hearing the truth. You bring up Jay Flowers to knock me even though you know FULL WELL what they story is because it's been discussed here dozens of times with dozens of pictures and stories to back up the claims. In fact if it were not for me then it's a near certainty that we would not have found out that the Nora Van Horn was the actual maker of J.E.F. Q Cases.
So yes, I know the history of case making pretty well at this point. Not all of it of course but a significant part. And I know the difference between an original design and a knockoff. Many of you are confused about that which is normal because it's not something you really think about unless you're a designer/maker.
Once you have spent a lot of time figuring out how to make something and you come up with a version that is unique to you then you will understand how it feels when someone else makes a crappy version of what you made and pretends like it is as good or better.
Most of you will never have to deal with that because you are not makers. You haven't invested any significant time, effort or money into building something that is appreciated by your customers only to see some other person simply take your look, make a cheapo version and THEN lie about it as if it's actually a well made piece. Most of you are consumers and not makers. So for a lot of you any two things that look similar enough are thought to be similar enough to get the job done. I get that.
But because you have that notion it doesn't automatically come true. When I bought my first J.E.F. Q Case I naively thought it MUST protect better than my Porper because it looked better and why would the maker not put in the same or better protection than my Porper? I found out the hard way in the form of a broken cue that in fact the $400 leather case didn't protect as well as my $150 Porper. I had to become a maker to get the type of case I wanted to protect my cues. And once I started making cases I started to see the amount of crap pushed into the market by unscrupulous sellers who don't care about your equipment. They only care about volume and acceptable loss. As long as they stay under 3% complaint that they have to exchange product to resolve they consider a product to be a success.
But you don't see the broken cues, the cues that rattle, the cues that get dings and scratches because of poor construction. You don't see behind the curtain because you don't know what to look for and because you think that one is as good as the other.