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[Malc Reade]

I've just been reading the topic about the guy making and selling copies of Paul's (PSShips), Dave Metcalfe's, Brian and Anne's (Mobile Marine) hulls etc. and Paul's quite vociferous responses.

Carol and I often come across often outwardly reputable traders who have obviously used our fittings to make, often nasty, white metal copies from silicone moulds.  We originally treated this plagiarism as 'imitation being the sincerest form of flattery' but now we're taking a different approach.

Frankly, we couldn't see any modeller worth his salt wanting to use white metal fittings for anything other than ballast, but if we find anybody copying our products in resin or any other material, including white metal, the plagiarists can look forward getting a visit from my brother's ex-SAS mates armed with a lot of baseball bats!

If any modeller out there who comes across ANYTHING that he believes to be copied, please inform the manufacturer concerned immediately.  Manufacturers in this industry have to work incredibly hard to scratch a living, none of us smaller guy's are wealthy and buying copied products only pushes us nearer to the point where we have to call it a day and close down.

We are already aware of one plagiarist who is copying BECC's range of vinyl products.  The copies are a pale imitations of the BECC equivalents, and are not pre-cut.  He is selling the copied decals at about half of BECC's prices.  Any unwary buyer will be directly contributing to the demise of BECC.

No manufacturer will object to fair and honest competition, it's what keeps us all on our toes.  Plagiarists are evil, nasty criminals who have to be stopped for ALL our sakes, modellers included.

Rant over,

Regards, Malc

[Eddy Matthews]

You have every right to have a bit of a rant Malc!

I agree wholeheartedly that the few manufacturers we have need all the support we can give, and if that means reporting some lowlife so that they end up in court (or better still your suggestion!) then so much the better....

Just look at the number of manufacturers that have vanished over the last few years - No doubt in part because of these idiots ripping off their products! We need to support the genuine traders who produce the kits, hulls, fittings, etc etc that we all use from time to time.

Good on ya Malc..

Regards
Eddy

[dougal99]

quote from Malc Reade

"the plagiarists can look forward getting a visit from my brother's ex-SAS mates armed with a lot of baseball bats!"


So if we provide information on suspected plagiarists to you, would that make us accessories before the fact?


Two wrongs don't make a right.

Doug

[Malc Reade]

Doug

Two wrongs don't make a right.

No, I agree, and there isn't any satisfaction in it either, but given that the courts, police etc. are about as much use as chocolate rifles in circumstances like these, there isn't a practical humane alternative.

Please treat my threats in the original posts as being allegorical - the SAS guys and baseball bats are real enough, but we would in reality use less violent methods - poison perhaps? 

Regards, Malc

[dougal99]

Malc

I suspect that if you employed your suggested tactics to whatever degree of violence or threatened violence you'd find that the police and courts were pretty effective but not in your favour!

Doug

[chromedome]

I would love to have taken a baseball bat to the quality control guy who passed my Imara white metal fittings!!!


   chromedome

[kayem]

You're all using the wrong term here. The word Plagiarism can only be correctly applied to ideas or the written word. The evil that you're discussing in this thread, where a few lowlifes are copying legitimate manufacturers' hulls or fittings, should be referred to instead as counterfeiting.

[Malc Reade]

Hi kayem

You are absolutely correct, but let us not be sidetracked by the nuances of language - there are instances and examples enough of that on this Forum already.

Let's just call it 'copying' and continue with the matters at hand?

- and let me make it quite clear to all that I'm not about to send a gang of heavies around to anybody's premises armed with baseball bats.  It would obviously give me a great deal of satisfaction to do so, but I am a law-abiding citizen after all...

Regards, Malc

[maninthestreet]

Surely it's only counterfeiting if the copies are sold as, or marked in some way, as being made by the original manufacturer, or uses their logos/insignia, and that copyright subsists on these? No one Manufacturer A prevent any other Manufacturer B producing a model hull based on a prototype of, say, a Type 23 Frigate, given that both A and B will have merely copied the design of the full size Type 23 Frigate hull.

 ???

[White Ensign]

Malc, no matter what you call it- it is a criminal act. In the News there was a report, that the cases of plagiatism had increased by more than 200%, since China starts to flood the market.
Anyway- I know a several modeling-companies in Germany which try to do the same and they sell it mostly at Ebay. The moulds are mostly in poor conditions, are to be claimed as origins. Depending on the European law (no comments please- no salt in my wounds) if you sell it as a PRIVATE SALE... you don`t have to give any warranty on claims of quality. Bad times, thanx to the Eurocrats.
However, I use to buy my items (if I don`t make them on my own) from the supplier or manufacturer- never on Ebay. Private sales just from people which I use to know or- in case of doubt, I ask for some close-shots where you can (mostly) see if it is the real thing. Doesn`t save you from plagiats anyway, but better than nothing.

Jörg

[DavieTait]

Surely it's only counterfeiting if the copies are sold as, or marked in some way, as being made by the original manufacturer, or uses their logos/insignia, and that copyright subsists on these? No one Manufacturer A prevent any other Manufacturer B producing a model hull based on a prototype of, say, a Type 23 Frigate, given that both A and B will have merely copied the design of the full size Type 23 Frigate hull.

 ???

No its totally against the law to copy even small details of a product and sell it. I run a warhammer club and Games Workshop will come down hard on anyone copying even the smallest of their components. Its called Intelectual Property Rights and only the person who designed and built the original has the right to allow anyone else to make copies.

If someone wants to go into direct competition by building GRP hulls of the same ship at the same scale , they cannot just buy a hull and copy it , they have to do all the research themselves , legally too not by ripping off anyone else they have to stump up for original plans/etc , manufacture the hull master and the moulds. This is the only way that can be done legally. When it comes to parts and components , yes its possible to make silicone moulds and cast them in white metal , BUT ( and I know this for a fact as I make my own wargaming components and cast copies for myself using high temp RTV and white metal ) , if you try to copy a component that you have not manufactured with casting in mind then you run into a lot of problems with loosing detail , the feed tube blocks out details at one end , you get flash seeping out between the mould halves. In all I can tell a copy from an original at 6ft away no probs ( unless its been done by someone with a LOT of experience that is and 99.99% of fraudsters buy the RTV and white metal and go by the little leaflet you get which will not be sufficient believe me lol ).

If I ever find anything that is a copy I inform the original manufacturer , I told Paul that I thought that Newcastle numpty had copied one of his hulls , i've told Dave Metcalf and Kingstone Moulding too as well as Emailing Billings about that guy ( altho I never got a reply ).

Davie

[Malc Reade]

Hi Jorg and maninthestreet

Copying other peoples products for sale is a criminal act.  I think we are all agreed on that?  As a manufacturer of a large range of injection moulded deck fittings, we could, without too much difficulty, modify our moulds to include our own name on the product.  But would you buy our ventilators or winches if they had 'Reade Models' or 'Reade Plastics' written all over them?  I think not.

It's a different matter where a manufacturer of, say a hull, can include his own label buried in the resin on the inside of the moulding?  It would help if all hull manufacturers included such labels, and modellers refused to buy hulls without labels.

We have to make a distinction between the lone modeller making a copy of something for his own use, and the manufacturer or trader who makes multiple copies of somebody else's products for sale, passing them off as his own as often happens with white metal versions of our own fittings.

Sometime soon, I will make a set of plywood components for a crash tender for my own use.  I will use an original Aerokits plan to do this.  By doing so, I will not be financially damaging any of the other manufacturers of crash tenders, although I am sure that any of them would have happily sold me a kit?  Aerokits are no longer in existence and therefore I am not depriving them of a sale.  In this example, I understand that Jotika have the rights to the Aerokits designs, but I'm sure that my good friend John Wright at Jotika would not object to me making a model for my own use from an old set of plans that were published before he acquired the rights to the name, and that have been in the public domain for many years?

On the other hand, if I had bought (say) a George Turner crash tender hull and then made hundreds of copies of it to sell on our trade stand, I would be committing a criminal offence and I would rightly expect a visit from George holding a baseball bat? (I also count George as a good friend by the way).

Dave Tait is perfectly correct in his comments.  Thanks for your input Dave.

My best regards, Malcolm

 

[kayem]

Maninthestreet, copying someone else's work, even if it's a scale model of a full size vessel, a fibreglass hull or something like that, is illegal however you do it. The shipbuilder still owns the copyright of the full size design, but the model manufacturer owns the copyright of his small scale replica. It's still every bit as illegal though probably harder to prove, if you make changes to a hull or fitting to try to disguise what you've done, no matter how you might describe the final result when you try to sell the copies. That would be counterfeiting, which is bad enough, but if after copying the item, you tried to sell the copies as the genuine article, that that is what your solicitor would term 'passing off', which is a separate and even more serious offence.

[Aston]

Hang the bu##ers  ::)

Aston