How can some comapnys rip off the designs of others

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george burns

george burns

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http://www.slickguns.com/product/kriss-sphinx-compact-9mm-dasa-decocker-15-round-81999-sh
http://www.slickguns.com/product/ti...d-rubber-grip-matte-black-39900-free-shipping
This and many others are almost identical "looking" to the real original guns.
Don't these people patent or patent pending, their designs?
It has to suck to see your pistol knocked off for half price. Is this what our country has come to, where any original idea is subject to leeches who copy what you did and call it their own.
This is just one example of many, much like the CZ copies.
May it be because they aren't American company's and the laws don't apply to them. I don't see S&W or Ruger being copied like these foreign gun makers.
If someone did it to something I made, I would be more than a little aggravated, especially when inferior metals and stampings can give the original product a bad name.
 
I hear ya George. Buy the original if it pleases you. All industries have the same problem or competitive spirit. Sometimes the original is improved upon by the imposter. I don't know enough about the gun industry to know who is who.

Who made the original ar?
Who made the original 1911?
Who made the original revolver?
Who made the original plastic striker fired gun?
 
I understand that China, Korea, make knockoffs of everything, but they aren't being sold by American company's like Buds. If they "Buds" are actually paying to have knock offs made, we should boycott them. Turkey has growing anti American constituency . These Country's don't even like us, and we are buying guns from them, something is wrong with that. We can get all the guns we want from either our own country or friendly Governments and out allies, "not just allies on paper", we give the Pakistani's 2 billion in aid and the had Bin Laden, living there under military watch.
Please don't bring up Glock, as the Austrian people are friendly to the west, as are many other country's we do business with, and they are not copying our products. Same for military weapons, that war was fought and most of them are allies or have a decent relation ship with the West. But Korea, China, and several others want us dead.
The best one is that CNN, "my uncles used to call it the Commie network" , has a commercial, that says Invest In Kazakhstan, I find that to be out of a bad movie, last time I checked that was a stronghold for terrorist organizations and a strong alignment with Turkey who has a growing anti American sentiment.
And we are buying guns from them.
 
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Patents don't last forever. I think the US patent is good for 20 years, but the vast majority of current firearm designs are much older than that.

For an example of an American design being copied, look at how many people make 1911 and AR variants. As to why S&W and Ruger aren't being copied, I can only assume the demand for that type of product is already being met by S&W / Ruger's production.
 
There are a lot of things involved in a patent. Making minor internal changes that make your product "different" can often get companies around patents. How many guns or cars or rakes are truly unique?
I have been involved in some trademark issues with the USDA and it can get crazy.
 
Ruger quality is why Rugers are not being copied. There is just no shortcuts to making products the Ruger way.

My impression is Ruger's manufacturing methods are not practical to setup for quick fly by night knock off operations that want to make knockoffs the cheapest, easiest way possible.

The truth is I don't know but maybe someone here can tell me. I think it's a good guess after my brief web study on how Ruger researches, chooses, and makes the steel for their firearms.

Also a lot of Ruger firearms are uniquely of Ruger design with a few exceptions granted like the 1911 they make and there are probably lots of other non Ruger designs that sell well enough and are much easier for these knock off companies to tool up for.

Hard use should quickly reveal the difference in some perhaps most instances between cheapies and the real ones provided the real ones are not inferior to begin with. Then there are those that only look the same on the outside but are nothing alike inside. I think it can swing either way with those.
 
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Yes but they don't care about making it as good as Ruger, only to look like a ruger. So none of that matters to the untrained eye. It's like a Cobra, and a Kit car. Most people don't know which is which, but one goes for a million, and the other you can build for 20 grand.
 
george burns said:
Yes but they don't care about making it as good as Ruger, only to look like a ruger. So none of that matters to the untrained eye. It's like a Cobra, and a Kit car. Most people don't know which is which, but one goes for a million, and the other you can build for 20 grand.
Click to expand...

And depending on the quality of the Kit car, you will have a much better car. A lot of advances have been made in suspension and engine technology since the sixties, and lets face it, the aluminum body was pretty fragile compared to fiberglass.

While I am a fan of Ruger, most of their stuff is of the same general design as most other firearms, and I suspect that most of their proprietary features are still covered by patents.

And that is the key, 1911's have been around for well over a hundred years. Most bolt action guns are modified Mauser actions, Rolling block actions are even older, shot guns, other than the Saiga shot gun, are variations or copies of designs that are basically a century old or older.

While there are a few revolutionary new designs, most are just variations and tweaks of old reliable designs.
 
grter said:
Also a lot of Ruger firearms are uniquely of Ruger design...
Click to expand...

I'll beg to differ on that...they make good guns. But other than their Six Series revolvers, name ONE firearm they made in the last 60 years they didn't copy from someone else's design.

A few examples: the Mini-14 is a blatant copy of the M1 Garand. The M77 bolt actions copy the Mauser 98. The Blackhawk single action copies the Colt SAA. The #1 single-shot copies the Spencer carbine. Even the Mark I .22 pistol is a scaled-down Nambu. You want to talk about companies copying designs, Ruger is in fact, one of the worst offenders.
 
Patents expire.

Besides, how do you know that those companies are NOT paying for the right to make copies??

Not every copy is a reverse engineered rip-off, many of them are bought and paid for designs.

Its a whole lot cheaper to pay for the rights to copy a proven design than to start from scratch
 
Some guys may remember the old saying when the Japanese started making cars back in the late 60's, that they never had an original idea, but could copy anything made and sell it cheaper.
They proved that with all or the Japanese cars that culminated in the Infinity brand, which I myself was guilty of buying when they first came out.
It was unheard of to have a Luxury 4 door sedan that did 0-60 in 6 seconds, with a luxury interior and appointments.
But my family didn't speak to me for a year. My dad understood, but my uncles were all with Eastern airlines, Republic, Auto lite, etc., needless to say, you were supposed to buy American in their world
But I said that if the American car builders could build such a car, I would be the first in line for one. They were making the same ugly underpowered boring K car sedans back then.
The gun world should be different only because it appears that most of the market for civilian firearms is here in the States.
I guess that it doesn't pay for them to gear up for such a limited market, which is good for us. I don't want a Honda 50 cal, or a Suzuki 15 round 9mm pistol in my safe, none of the other guns would speak to it.
But I wonder what innovations would occur if there were more competition in the field.
Maybe a self cleaning gun, throw it in the oven at 500 for a half an hour, lol
 
As a couple others said patents expire, to add to your question those are both CZ75 copys and the CZ75 was never patented, which is one of the reasons it is so widely copied.
 
I've heard that a lot of companies don't like to advertise "patent pending" while they are ramping up production because that could leave the door wide open for someone to flood the market with bootleg product while their patent is going through the process. Don't know if thats true or not, but it makes sense to me at least.
 
1903 Springfield was a blatant ripoff of the 98 Mauser.

Mini-14 is very similar to an M14, but differs in the gas system.

Blackhawk differs from SAA in sights and internals.

Ruger Redhawk is a copy of nothing.
Same with SRH.

LCP copied P3AT.
Maybe they paid Kel-Tec for the right to make/sell it.
That would explain why you don't see so many new P3ATs on the market.
Ruger can make/sell enough LCPs to net a tidy profit for a small gun company like KT.

If only Ruger would copy the PMR-30.
High enough production volume would make them cheaper and easier to find.
 
It's easy to find firearms from Japan, China, The Philippines, Brazil, and just about every country in Europe. Imports from some of the Russian region were recently interrupted.
 
Almost every US company makes a version (copy) of the AR and the 1911. As previously mentioned, Rugers blatant ripoff of the Kel-Tec P3AT can't be ignored.

Re: the Ruger Mk I, Wiki has this to say about it: "In 1949 renowned inventor, gun designer, self-taught engineer, and entrepreneur Bill Ruger wished to produce and market a new handgun; and acquired a World War II Japanese Nambu pistol from a returning US Marine. Ruger successfully duplicated two Baby Nambu pistols[3] in his garage. Using the Nambu's silhouette and bolt system, Ruger produced his first prototype, but lacked the venture capital necessary to fund its introduction. When potential financial backer Alex Sturm was shown the prototype Ruger had created, he was impressed by its sleek traditional aesthetic and its slight resemblance to the classic nostalgia-evoking Luger pistol."

Companies steal ideas, designs, etc. all the time. US companies are no different. The only difference is, we don't pay our workers a handful of rice for a days work, so you won't see them being produced here at half price.
 
"1903 Springfield was a blatant ripoff of the 98 Mauser."

Actually, the USA paid substantial licensing fees to Mauser for use of their patents. We "renegotiated" the terms post WW-I, but ab-initio it was a license manufacture arrangement.


"It has to suck to see your pistol knocked off for half price. Is this what our country has come to, where any original idea is subject to leeches who copy what you did and call it their own"


Yeah, how dare S&W, Ruger, FN, HK, PSA, BCM, etc., etc., etc make AR clones? And how about all those 1911 copies from cheap copycats like... everyone. And Kalishnikov must be rolling in his grave watching the dirty capitalist pigs in the USA of all places COPYING his design without even saying thanks, never mind sending money... :rolleyes:




Willie

.
 
Give the guy a break he started from a simple background, loved his country and personally witnessed the horrors inflicted on his people by the germans.

His design was intended for world war II to ward off german invaders and came to full production late.

It's not his fault Stalin went berzerk.
 
These threads come up ad nauseum so I will just respond by quoting another member here:

"mechanically speaking, there are only so many ways of sending a bullet down a barrel." -- M-Cameron; March 17, 2012 in a similar thread as this.
 
Is this what our country has come to, where any original idea is subject to leeches who copy what you did and call it their own.
Click to expand...

Might want to reconsider. America is a country where an original idea IS copied if their are no copyrights or patent rights.

There is no "intellectual property" without legal protection. If there is no legal protection, then the idea is up for grabs.

Whoever makes the best version gets the most business, and WE benefit because we can get the one that meets our needs - not the needs of a maker who decides what our needs are.

Do they have to make them look the same? No. But then the public wouldn't buy them, because the public itself are the one who want it to look like the premier costly version, and it's a direct witness to their ethics.

Own a wrist watch with rotating bezel, black dial, triangular mark at 12:00? It's a copy of a Rolex Submariner, and there have been thousands, by every reputable maker in business.

Same for the 1911.

Same for the AR15.

Same for the IBM Clone, the Ford Mustang, the Shelby Cobra, Levi jeans, the hamburger, doorknobs, and the .300 Whisper - which was originally a .30 x 5.56 wildcat some competitors came up with to force the 3Gun competition to accept the AR15.

Oh well, we just can't have that. We should be stuck with just the original, only, take it or lump it?

I'll take the blatant copying. It's nice to see an object some idolically worship become a mundane commodity. Cuts the price for the rest of us.

Bought a $49 blem lower the other day - they used to be quite expensive at one time, and you had to get the rest of the gun with it, done the way the maker liked. Not you.

Blatant copy produce by leeches. Just horrible. It's my second, neither are Colt manufacture - which is the only reputable AR15 out there. All the others are just junk produced by thieves.

Right?

Not so much.
 
I've heard that a lot of companies don't like to advertise "patent pending" while they are ramping up production because that could leave the door wide open for someone to flood the market with bootleg product while their patent is going through the process. Don't know if thats true or not, but it makes sense to me at least.
Click to expand...


Actually, if I understand it correctly, it's the other way around. A "Patent Pending" mark on a product lets everyone know that the patent has been applied for, and until it is either issued or denied, you best keep your hands off.
Any infringement on "Patent Pending" products could result in lawsuits by the designer , with the possibility of both damage and royalty payments due. Plus fines by the Feds for infringement.

At least that's the way it was explained to me by my brother, and he holds (or Held) several firearms related patents.

Walter
 
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