Does anyone know if these cues are licensed to use the Gina name? Does Gina make something off them?
To give you an idea just how brutal this can be is. I remember walking around the BCA show and standing in front of stands from places like China. They had knock offs of every cue maker right there next to the cue makers including McDermott and Meucci. EXACT KNOCK OFF'S, at the same show. I personally condemn the BCA for allowing it. The BCA really eats shi! and they always have. They could care less as long as they make a buck. I would like to see a group of cue makers at the show go over and just smash the stands with the knock offs even if they get themselves arrested. It would be worth it.
They are not using the Gina name. Ernie was made aware of this by the importer.
The importer had no knowledge that the cue was a knockoff of a Gina design until the cues were already on the way to the warehouse. So he decided to make lemonade out of lemons and give credit where credit is due.
Ernie has said in the TAR interview that he does not mind when there are decal copies like this one that give credit because then it makes people aware of the "Ginacue" brand and that could lead to more buyers of the real thing. He said that in fact this has happened when some people found the Sterling cue and decided then to find out about Ginacue and sought him out to buy cues from him.
If anything here Sterling should be held as a SHINING EXAMPLE of how it should be done if one is going to use the design from another brand's cues. Or at least partially how it should be done.
To me the proper way to do it would be for cuemakers to license their designs if they choose to and then get credit for it. But any way the ornamentation on a functional product is not copyrightable. It should be but it's not. Design patents cover that and 99% of cuemakers do not seek design patents for their creations.
This loophole in the intellectual property law is what allows cue factories to pump out cues which steal the designs of others. It is what ties the hands of the BCA and does not allow them to LEGALLY remove those cues on display at the BCA show.
Now IF the the BCA at least had a way to register designs with them then they could write it into their contracts with exhibitors that IF an exhibitor shows up with product that has been previously REGISTERED with them then they will not be allowed to display that product openly nor offer it for sale in any way or lose the right to attend future shows.
But do you think that the BCA - which has on it's board the major USA manufacturers in our industry can think of this SIMPLE solution?
Hardly.
One year in Houston the BCA sold a mega block of 50 booths to a Chinese trade show company who then went out and sold those booths to a bunch of smaller companies. Upon walking up to the megabooth the first thing one saw was a rack of books for sale and one of those books was a copy of the BCA's Rule Book. Of course when the BCA was made aware of this they had it removed. Funny how that works when it affects them directly.
