Thought about it when I first designed and started building them. The cost and wait time is really unreasonable, for me.
I can understand that completely. A few years ago I managed to design/invent something with the help of a friend. Since most of my work along that sort of line was at the time somewhat popular, talk about it's sale once people knew about it was unavoidable. After doing a little research (as well as talking to a prominent knife maker/designer) I realized that it was more than I could financially bear. During that research, I did manage to find a quote attributed to well known knife maker Ed Schempp. It basically stated that since patents and copy writes only work where the courts support them (China doesn't care), the best way to protect your intellectual property is to provide a better product than your imitators.
I have made this design for over 5 years now. It's a big free country, but to try to make a buck off some one else's design work bothers me a bit.
Kind of like the carbide tool thing.
The guy did say he might have a bargain on material soon, though! Nice to talk with him, but if you were copying something, would you call the guy and ask about it?!?
In a way I get it, and in a way I (like You) don't get it. I once got an order from a customer who wanted me to make him a lanyard in a certain way, and sent me a picture of another lanyard makers work to show me what he wanted. I had traded/corresponded/shared with this other lanyard maker, so I knew that he was somewhat protective of the concept in question. Upon receiving the request from my customer, I first recommended he go the the originator of the concept, telling him that the guy was good people to work with. When the customer insisted that he only wanted to deal with me, I then informed him that I would first have to check with the originator.
Fast forward a couple years. I'm looking on a "show us your lanyards thread" that had a lot of my work posted on. And see a piece of word (by someone else) that was an exact copy of a design that I had developed.It was a very unique design for someone in the field, and no one had acknowledged doing anything like it before. Yet, here was this guy who wasn't even around when I started making them, and he was showing off my design as if he had come up with the idea. (even the customer who helped me with the concept commented by saying " He posts it like, "Look what I've invented".) When I politely pointed out that it looked familiar (by referencing an earlier post in the exact same thread that he was posting in), he merely stated that he had not seen my work, and came up with the idea on his own. Mind you, I the ONLY person that I'd seen doing this sort of thing, and I was pretty involved in that community enough to know that there probably was little chance of anyone else doing it.
When someone asked me how to do it on a different forum (that I had not frequented for about a year) someone even commented that the concept was just a combination of other things that others had been doing, just in a different way. Yet, at least this guy had the decency in his request to say that he would understand if I had wanted to keep it a, "intellectual secret". I have a feeling that the reason no one else copied it was because they all saw it as my property, and as such didn't want to "step on my toes".
Also, some people just have a little more pride than to use someone else work. Imitation is one thing. When Crabcreekind showed off his new castings, it was obvious that he was trying to emulate someone who he admired, rather than steel his ideas.
Seeing someone else work, and copying it just to turn a profit can often give back what is put in.
It's quite possible that he came up with this product independently of any knowledge of Paul's product. It wouldn't be unheard of for him to market it, and then have someone else point out that it's a copy of Paul's. If that happened, I can understand why he would have made the call. However, I would wonder why he didn't know about something that unique being in existence.
