A copyright is not a patent, and they protect completely different aspects of a product. Same with a trademark.

Dont worry :lol: .... I may not always agree with everyone on here, but this is a MUCH better forum than the Bromptontalk Yahoo list ... which I just find SO boring. The many perspectives and many different folding bike 'champions' here along with a whole spectrum of riders from 2 miles to the shops to 200Miles every w/e (or whatever Jur does :) ) makes for a much more lively discussion.... (even if some of us are cheapskates and promote fakes :lol:)

The moderators are cowards.

The moderators are cowards.

Putting ethics aside for a moment, I had lunch with my attorney yesterday and we spoke about this very topic. (Luckily he's on a retainer.) According to him, as the buyer, there is nothing which compels me legally not to buy a clone. Even if the clone represents stolen intellectual property, if I buy it, it is not as though I am receiving stolen property. Others here have said that the patent on the Strida has expired. If that is the case (and BTW I was unaware of that when spouting my prior pontification), there is nothing to keep a manufacturer from making a clone. Where there would be trouble is if the clone manufacturer or anyone in the sales chain were to represent the clone as an actual Strida.

Then I asked him about the ethics of the situation. He pointed at his Rolex and said, "This cost me $150. Looks great, doesn't it?"

Your thoughts on the matter while admirable are a bit naive. This phenomena, "right" or "wrong" being irrelevant, is the cost of doing business. I work in an industry where it is almost certain our company will be sued about every 5th contract, not because we have any reason to be and we haven't really "lost" in court, but because that's just the business and very common for anyone in it. We build potential legal fees into our cost structure. If you're going to enter the market place as a large manufacturer with a newly patented product, be prepared to have to pay for litigation for it, pure and simple. Legal protection is not a right in this country or the world. It is a service that is contracted and sold, especially true in business. If that is displeasing to someone in business, they need to get out. Many consumers have unrealistic views of how patent litigation takes place. A patent many times can be picked apart by a gifted lawyer if a lousy one prosecuted the patent. Further, only specific pieces of a product can be patented, and again is largely subject to the talent of the attorney. Most budding inventors get the cheapest patent prosecution possible and get half-assed patents that most large legal teams can rip apart in a weekend. Anyway, keep in mind exclaiming an idea is yours is not a black and white process and there is no "base" like in tag to protect you. The patent process is not only designed to protect the inventor, but also to protect the consumer from monopolized industry.

Are there not many different factors in this.

1.) Legal matters. Will the Toll or Police take it and me get fined or have to go to jail?
2.) Moral and Ethics. How it feels and what all those around me feel about it.

Will I be able to sleep well? Will I be able to look myself in the eyes knowing me have bought
a fake? Am I ok with telling relatives and friends and neighbors that I bought a fake?

I bought a SmartBike, which I feel a bit unsure of if it is so ethically ok to do?

Why is that? Cause if you look closely it sure looks like a Handybike with bigger wheels.
If I where the guy designing the Handybike me would feel had by the SmartBike folks.
The small changes SB made is more cosmetic or to make it cheaper to build than HB. SB is steel that rust even new so not good quality? HB use Aluminum

Not a new design nor a really different bike. So on HandyBike's behalf I feel a bit odd.
And I bought it heavily overprised too. 3 to 4 times the price SmartBike in England. :)

I completely agree and yes - I am a cheapskate. That's why after a lifetime of meanness and fakery, I can live on my bank interest and plan the aquisition of more and more fakes.

:lol:

At the end of the day, we'll all be dead and our relatives will have the joy of clearing out and selling all our possessions. Imagine the disappointment of mine when all they can find is fakes and junk. It'll be a lesson to them on the pointlessness of pursuing possessions at the expense of better things.

Thanks - this gave me a great laugh.

If buying a fake or a 'maybe fake' is all you have to trouble your conscience you are too good for this sinful planet mate.

If I want to examine my wicked past, I have plenty else to bother me aside from riding on a Merc and telling people how I like doing it.

In principle, yes, but in practice, most likely not; Reason being that I tend to buy products at the cutting edge and copiers are very rarely quick enough to implement the latest ideas. As a market participant, I most often demand innovation and innovation is simply not what the fakers have for sale.

The fact of the matter is that there is not a fake Carry-me on the market, but if there were then I would hope that Pacific would step up to the plate and offer the improvements we all want. If, on the other hand, Pacific decided to simply continue to manufacture the same old product at a higher price than the copycat competition then I would have no qualms about buying a fake instead of second genuine. I already bought a genuine because Pacific was the only one supplying the innovation I demanded. If they stopped selling innovation then I may no longer have any reason to buy from them.

Take for example, the fake Strida's. If they were available a couple years ago I might have bought one, because authentic Strida's do not offer any added value to me as a customer (whether innovation or otherwise). Now, however, Mark Sanders designed and released the IF Mode fixing many of the gripes I have with the Strida (small wheels, single speed, etc). So buying a fake Strida is out of the question because it's no longer the best match for my needs.

When inventors are serving the portion of the market demanding innovation, questions of authenticity usually do not apply. Copycats digging into an inventor's livelihood usually mean that the inventor is slacking off, in which case I would have no problem "firing" the creator and "hiring" the copycat until the creator shapes up. This, of course, isn't always the case. The market doesn't always work the way it should, but I believe the laws in place err enough on the side of lazy has-been former creators that I can do whatever I want within my legal rights (even going so far as buying illegal copycats) without worrying about morally offending creators.

I'm well aware of the differences between a copyright, a patent, and a trademark, thank you very much, but I was trying to refer to the similarities.

Unfortunately, the language of the topic is a bit biased. I refuse to group them all under the umbrella of "intellectual property" due to the connotation of inherent ownership, theft, etc. Unlike the right to physical property copyright, patent, and trademark are each a privilege and a temporary right, specifically the right to copy, and although they each relate to different kinds of information the fundamental notion in all three cases is that of a copy right (perhaps I should have put a space in my original post for clarity).

...which is why we all have to get out of the habit of calling various legal rights to duplicate information "intellectual property" and the violation of such rights "theft".

As you noted "stolen intellectual property" is a complete misnomer because while it may be intellectual it is neither stolen nor is it property.

You are twisting my words to suit your argument. I did not say that intellectual property is a misnomer. I indicated that in the case of the Strida clone, I as the end buyer am not stealing the intellectual property. It would be the manufacturer who did the stealing, that is if the patent were still in effect.

Intellectual Property is "owned" on the same basis that everything else is. Broad social agreement. There is nothing about that $20 bill in your wallet that makes it "yours." It's the same as the $20 bill in everyone else's wallet. The only thing that makes it "yours" is social agreement. The same can be said for your bike or anything else you own. The concept of ownership altogether is artificial, and similarly real or unreal as we choose to make it. Once we agree that ownership exists as a concept, it is really only a short step to the concept of intellectual property. People are punished for IP theft all the time, so for you to deny the concept is really irrelevant. My point was that as the buyer, we are not complicit in the theft when we buy the Strida clone. This is for two reasons. First, we didn't copy the Strida to manufacture the clone. Second, the clone is not being represented as a Strida.

But for the sake of clarification, let's take the example of my attorney's fake Rolex. The manufacturer of the fake is committing a crime for which, jurisdictional impediments notwithstanding, he could be punished. It is implicit that the seller of the watch is representing the watch as a genuine Rolex, so he is culpable. The buyer has a legal leg to stand on though. He can always say he thought that $150 was the going rate for Rolexes, and had no idea it was counterfeit. As far as the ethics of the situation go, the buyer has to actually believe the watch is genuine or he is ethically in the wrong.

Lawyer? Ethics? HAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAhahahahahaaaaaaaa...... *hack, gasp, cough, wheeze*

On the contrary, there is something about a $20 bill in your pocket that makes it yours in a very real and physical way, despite any kind of arbitrary social agreement. When you have a $20 in your pocket you control that bill by physical force. There's nothing artificial about it and all associated laws and social agreements are merely elaborations of this real physical fact.

Information, on the other hand, has exactly the opposite nature. As I posted earlier in this thread, Thomas Jefferson has quite eloquently point out the very real, physical, and nonartificial fact that information not only evades any and all exclusive physical control, but it forces itself into the control of all people who are made aware of it. So the concept of intellectual property is not only a long step from the concept of physical property, it's also a step in the opposite direction (opposing the natural order instead of reinforcing it).

The fact that as a buyer we are not complicit in any crime when buying a Strida clone, has absolutely nothing to do with our direct involvement or how the clone is represented. For example if the manufacturer did, in fact, steal Stridas (as in, actually steal as opposed to duplicate), then we would indeed be complicit if we knowingly purchased the stolen goods. The reason we are not complicit in the case of copy right infringement is because copy right infringement is obviously not theft.

I'm sorry for twisting your words and assuming when you said "stolen intellectual property" is not "stolen property" you meant to imply that "stolen intellectual property" is not "stolen property", but your clarification here makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. If your attorney's fake Rolex was actually stolen then what you say about feigning ignorance while morally failing would be true, but this is not the case. Your attorney can tell the entire world that he willfully and knowingly bought a fake Rolex and he still would not be culpable.

Copy right and theft have absolutely nothing to with each other and no matter how much you'd like to deny it your examples very clearly illustrate the difference.

By that reasoning, if I have the wherewithal to take your $20 bill from you, it becomes legitimately mine.

Of course it is. In the case of copyright infringement, or more properly for the examples used in this discussion, trademark infringement, what is being stolen is the reputation of the trademark holder and by extension any profit lost due to sales of fake items. Furthermore, from a consumer point of view, if you had paid $5000 for a fake Rolex that had been represented as authentic, wouldn't you feel ripped off?

And what reasoning would that be? I said that physical objects have a real basis on which laws and precepts of possession can be elaborated. I did not say that possession is the sole determination of legitimate ownership. This is in contrast to ethereal objects like ideas or information or light for which notions of ownership are 100% artificial.

To spell it out, you said that legitimate ownership of both are 100% artificial and I retorted that only ownership of ethereal objects is 100% artificial whereas ownership of physical objects is at least partially (if not mostly) grounded in reality.

Of course not. Despite what you feel or how you like to describe it, trademark infringement can in no way be interpreted as "theft of reputation". If it were then the end customer would be culpable for "buying a stolen reputation". Like it or not, that is the way theft works and, economically adverse as it may be to creative parties, selling/buying a fake Rolex ain't it.

Your entire perspective is couched in false illustrations. For example, "lost" implies that you had something. Lost opportunity for sales is not "lost sales". "Lost sales" would be if you dropped the cash box in the river on the way to the bank and mere opportunities do not have anywhere near the same legal and moral status as actual possessions (in other words, according to social agreement there's nothing wrong or even unusual about a lost opportunity).

Lost opportunity for sales is not "lost sales".

I understand the logic here, but is there a relevant legal precedent that spells this out? For instance, there have been settlements for projected loss of wages, which means that sometimes lost opportunity for wages is the same as "lost wages." I know there's a great difference between sales and wages, but it would be interesting if anyone could find any cases made for projected loss of sales due to any kind of defamation or trademark infringement.

Thanks for lending your authority and expertise to the conversation.

That's an interesting question.

But still I think the point remains that if copy right infringement were theft then there would be no question. The very fact that the question must be separately answered goes to show that theft and copy right infringement are entirely separate matters.

Not directly related to the thread, but what the heck ...

If we think about the $20 bill, there really is a social agreement regarding its value. It is just a plain piece of paper & fabric with some fancy ink. Yet we all accept that it has value such that if I give one person $20, that person gives me goods or services with the understanding that they can use that $20 to garner some amount of goods and services from another individual/group.

But we were talking about appropriation of the bill, not its value.

OK, so let's look at the Strda thing:

They are not involved in patent infringement--patent ran out and even the designer admits that the design is in the public domain and may be approprated by anyone who wants to manufacture it.

They are involved in copyright infringement with the marketing matierial they... what?... infringed from Ming? Approprated from Ming? At some point, someone at Strda went to the Strida site, copied the images and put them up on their own site. Electronically, sure, but there was a physical act where the Strda person went and copied a file for which they have no copyright, and posted it on their site. It is most definitely copyright infringement, but tell me how the act of procuring those files was not theft...

Maybe we're talking semantics. In popular parlance, that is theft. Maybe the legal term is a bit more narrow?

In English law the act of copying a file from an internet site would not be theft. Here for an act to be theft, the perpetrator must intend to 'permanently deprive the owner of the property.' This can not be applied to an act such as copying a file and using it, since the original file remains intact and available to its owner. Copyright infringement - the use of a digital photograph without permission, for example, is probably illegal, but it is not theft. Furthermore the concept of copyright protection is more naturally confined to literature, or the works of cinema, or music, where large scale creative work is involved. How can a novel of a hundred thousand words, or a music album, be compared to a bent tube, some U shaped handlebars and small wheels? It's a joke. Some people would seek to copyright a witty sentence if they could. I would question the right to copyright photographs for the same reason, They are the result of an instantaneous act, not some long term process of creative endeavor.

Once again, I assert that the general principles of making a bicycle, even a folding one are so well established that an individual who has arranged the parts in a slightly novel way ought not to be able to prevent others from making a bicycle with the same arrangements. The makers of Strida and of Brompton have built their businesses on the work of hundreds of mechanics and designers who brought the first crude bicycle designs to a mature and well established set of principles. How dare they now seek to prevent others (if they do) from utilising their own small contribution to the process of design and making.

Strda are almost certainly guilty of the trading offences in Britain of 'Passing Off', and counterfeiting. This is where a trader seeks to capitalise on the marketing work and the reputation of a different business by imitating and presenting the product in such a way that they are deemed to be confusing the customer into thinking they are buying a different product than they are. STRDA should rename their product and take their own marketing pictures of it.

There is a parallel discussion on this topic over at Strida Forum (now part of new foldingforum)

Interestingly, the Strida Folding bars patents are still in force.

This I do not agree with .. that Strida and Brompton design are not innovative and just derivatives of previous designs .. if so they would not have been granted patents in the 1st place.

Whilst i too 'like a baaargain', and I do have a few doggy DVD's, software that in not 100% within licencing rules etc. close copies and fakes in my posession - but i am not trying to justify that 'fakery is OK'.

If I had a fake Brompton, Strida, Swift, dahon, carry-me, birdy, moulton .... or whatever .. I would not try and justify the decison by some of the above, frankly crazy (and now rather boring arguments), I'd just say, hey I like that design but i chose not to buy the original, and I know this is bad for the originators, and maybe even illegal, and move on.

So, yes I fess up I am a hipocrit :D .. but at least I am being straight about it ... and I know that my actions are ultimately harming originators, (and also the people employed by fakers ... how else are prices so low ?? ).

To see why fakes are bad see: Common Myths about Counterfeits on myauthentics.com

Wow. I am brand spankin' new here, and what a way to get a baptism of fire, so to speak. I guess I have to play the devil's advocate and ask the question:

Does anyone know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the "Strda" is of poor quality?

I've read a lot of what sounds like peculation and conjecture, but no solid facts. In fact, it seems that one poster here bought a "fake" Strida and it was actually a good bike. Personally, I have only the opinion that if someone can do better and also cheaper, then go for it, as long as it's within applicable laws.

Should Yamaha have been sued for copying a French Horn design and producing a horn that plays as well or better than one that is twice, or even three times the price? Granted, everyone and their brother uses that same design, for the most part, but you get the idea. Granted, also, that China produces a lot of crap, but some of their stuff is actually very good, since they want to compete on the global market (one Chinese maker of french horns has stated that they want to be the next Yamaha). Sure, you have to take the approach of "may the buyer beware," but if it's legal to do so, why not make a similar product and sell it for less, especially if the quality is just as good. Let the market decide the winner.

As for the Strida, I think it looks great (how is it when climbing hills?), but I fail to see $800 USD worth of material on the whole thing (that's about what it costs here).

Whew! Glad it's over. Let me get my flame-suit on :D.

Just to clear up a point: Goods never are sold for what they cost. They are always sold for profit. The seller will consider parameters such as original production cost, license fee, development amortization, market forces eg demand, what other similar products are sold for, and will try to make a price which will attract buyers without sacrificing too much profit. If there is competition, then the price will come down until profit becomes zero, at which point a seller will lose interest in selling the product, or may (rarely) keep it on as something to attarct customers.

But in the end, a product is always sold at the maximum amount at which it will sell, which seldom bears any real resemblance to production cost. End of story.