Copy paste airguns

[TwiceHorn]

The legal fact is that reverse engineering and copying of a product, in the absence of a patent, is perfectly legal and even to be encouraged because such work increases competition in the product, lowers prices, and may result in improvement of the product (if you have ever torn down a product you may have seen ways to improve it or learned lessons that apply in other designs).

It may not be perfectly morally acceptable, but if you want to protect your products from copying or imitation, better get a patent.  Commerce is amoral or possibly even immoral in the strictest sense.

[Gippeto]

Watched a tv documentary week ago in Columbia these guys were making real guns from near nothing way out in the boonies, they were making 45 kimber clones and you could not see the difference other than one had a serial number, took him 5 months to make one and was paid 115 bucks but by the time it reached its destination it was in the thousands because it was a untraceable gun. Its a shame but what can you do about a 3rd world country. David

[Bizill]

The legal fact is that reverse engineering and copying of a product, in the absence of a patent, is perfectly legal and even to be encouraged because such work increases competition in the product, lowers prices, and may result in improvement of the product (if you have ever torn down a product you may have seen ways to improve it or learned lessons that apply in other designs).

It may not be perfectly morally acceptable, but if you want to protect your products from copying or imitation, better get a patent.  Commerce is amoral or possibly even immoral in the strictest sense.

They don't exactly make it easy to get a patent these days.  Sure sometimes stupid &^^& gets patented easily but something truly unique will have you facing a firing squad type of odds of getting a patent.  Let's not kid ourselves.

[StevenG]

If anything the modern patent office gives out patents to easily and lets the courts sort it out. This is a disservice to everyone. The patent holder is stuck defending what may well be a bad patent he already spent money getting and the market is stuck fighting against many bad patents.

[Bizill]

Guess who benefits from patent infringements...yuppers.  Lawyers.  Cha-ching!$$$$$