Fred Agnir said:
"Sure there are gray areas, but whatever the lines are, the Phillippis in question are certainly over it, especially if we compare copyright lawsuits in other industries like the music industry. Ghost Busters was in copyright infringement of I Want a New Drug. And it went to court, and Huey Lewis won (out of court). It wasn't a "direct copy," but it infringed. That's what Phillippi and, IMO, Coker is doing. And copyright infringement is not accepted as norm in our society.
Fred
Fred,
First things first.. the "direct copy" phrase came from Jim, and the cues he showed are not direct copies, at least not the cues Jim picked off of Lucky's site. Copy meaning duplicate, exact. All that aside, to say that Coker, who uses metal ringwork, and in most cases he uses a single material butt sleeve, is a SW copy, is a little off. The cues are different, the only thing wrong is that when people sell them they like to equate the hit of a coker with that of a SW and thats just bunk. Did Coker make a few cues that are closer to SW's than that of his norm? I don't know, but post a link if you have something closer to a SW.
But if you are going to say that Coker is making a SW copy, and its as different as it is, same with the Phillippi's having their slight differences with Gina's, there is NO WAY that this cue would not fall into the same category. This cue is as close to a szamboti as you are going to find.
http://www.wuscues.com/images/BSch/bsch004-1.jpg
Bill Schick made it, so what. It has everything Szamboti from the point geometry, to the inlays. When I pointed this out before, the link convienently didn't work for one person, albeit BS, but if someone is going to fry Phillippi, they would have to say the same thing about Mr. Schick and so far its been avoided. Why would that be? Friendship, maybe Bill's name is bigger than Phillipi's.. many reasons could be there.
Take it one step further.. if someone made a cue that had Gus Szamboti's colors, his trade mark inlay's and patterns, you would have to say it to is stolen. It may not be a copy of a cue he made, but it is entirely Szamboti. This has also been avoided.
So like you said, copying a little riff in the music industry is considered stealing.. So equate that to a cue, if you copied the Szamboti propellor you would then be stealing, right? You can't have it both ways. If you are going to use the music industry as an anology, you must compare the two equally. Riff, cue inlay, entire song, entire cue.
My beef is not with the copying, as I stated its been going on a long time, and its been done by cuemakers that are considered masters. My only beef is with jimbo's selective applying and singling out certain cuemakers. Blanket statements do not cover this and are not good enough.
Now in defense of the cuemakers, I have photos of Gina "copies" (copies being as close as the phillipis are), since no one wants to pay attention to the definition of copy, from Stroud, Richard Black, a few others. I have Szamboti copies from Bill Shick, McDaniel, Black, Mottey, others, I have Bushka "copies" from Scruggs, Mottey, Skip, and others, I have SW "copies " or look alikes from Skip, Mottey, Coker, Thomas Wayne and others...
Who cares? Its been going on for ages.. there is no one innocent. You can go to cueaddicts and see spot on Szambotis from McDaniel, even Gilbert built a few cues for them that looked like SW. the list goes on and on and on. You would think if it was such a big problem the cuemakers would have done something a long time ago.
Joe (---BTW there is no grey area in stealing. If I steal 10 dollars I am going to jail, if I steal 1 million dollars, I am going to jail. The difference will be did I use a gun, or a knife.
