As a maker....
and as someone who has been copied extensively.
This is my view.
When I spend a lot of time coming up with a design I don't like to see it copied. I know that I don't "own" it in the same way that I own a car.
Legalities aside, because designs CAN be owned and ARE owned in some legal systems, I want to talk about how it FEELS from a maker's perspective.
It feels good when someone thinks enough of my design to copy it. It feels rotten when someone copies my design substantially with zero credit given to me.
It feels rotten to see other people selling products with my designs and I am not making any money off that.
That's the "theft" that people are talking about. Here is my Mason case design.
Here is a case by Instroke, my former company, that substantially copies it.
When I see this as a maker I have mixed feelings as described above. Of course I feel "flattered" that they still think enough of me to knock off my designs. But I know that every person who buys one of those cases is buying it because they like what I made and I am NOT making a penny off it.
Over the years though I come around philosophically to understand that this is simply how the works and it could not possibly work any other way. What I mean is that once a design is unveiled, legalities aside again, it belongs to the world. There is no way to tell 7 billion people you can't have this once you put it out there. If they can't get the original through "official" channels then they will create and distribute competing versions.
That's just the way it is.
If I am a farmer and I get double yields as my neighbor across the street with some method I developed how could I ethically and morally stop him from trying to copy whatever I did to get those yields? I can try to legally stop him and force him to pay me for my development time but the fact is that when an improvement is created then it shows everyone that it's possible and they rush to emulate it however they can.
That's how innovation works.
Now copying for profit, taking a design to make money off it, as in cue design copying, or any practically verbatim copying is "wrong" on some levels in my opinion because it does rob the creator of the fruit of his labor in a POTENTIAL sense. BUT it's not the same as robbing the creator of the ACTUAL goods created. Not the same as going into the orchard to rob the apples so carefully tended.
I once sat at the table of a case maker whose business at that time was primarily copies. I said to him why don't you innovate and create new models. He said who will pay for that? Who will distribute it? He said he is just a factory with the capability to make products and people bring him orders and he makes the least amount of money on those products. It's not his business to figure out whose design it is when he is responsible for feeding 100 people. I get that
I have come to see this issue from all sides, not just my own as a maker. While I won't copy anyone's work verbatim I am not ashamed at all to take inspiration from everywhere. That's how I operate. Other makers are far more artistic and they choose to follow their own vision of what a case should look like and stick to that. I think it takes all kinds to make a world.
While I can't be the type of person who would flat out copy another maker's work for profit I can't really condemn those who do. Everyone does what they need to do to survive. Sometimes what they do isn't wholly moral, not ethical, and in some places not legal. But as I said when I, as a maker, put a design into the world, I set it free whether I want it to be free or not.
