Over the weekend I visited a Barnes & Noble. Amongst the tchotchke at the checkout was a camouflaged book mark. Upon closer inspection I noticed that it was in the MultiCam pattern.
When I flipped it over I noticed that it had been designed by David Cole Wheeler. I thought that was pretty amazing since I didn’t see his name on the MultiCam patent.
I checked with Crye Precision and they informed me that they did not license the MultiCam pattern to the producer of these bookmarks.
This just goes to show that you never know where you are going to see a knockoff. And, with the US Army Camouflage Improvement Effort afoot, you can imagine that even images of the winning patterns are going to be very lucrative as the market moves to use them in various ways.
There is also a journal at B+N that is multicam with “Top Secret” on the cover.
I notice it also says “made in china.”
Seriously don’t give that book mark to you kids. Apparently they will die….
I wouldn’t doubt that the “designer” would be first to cry foul is he thought somebody had violated his IP.
Years ago Polo RL wanted to sue people for using their copyrighted blackwatch tartan design. It was pointed out to them that they had copied from someone else and if anyone owns the blackwatch tartan it’s HMG.
No doubt they would claim that its the design of the logo and the shape of the piece….
At some point, once an idea, pattern, etc becomes so purvasive, it ceases to be IP (or even copy written) and is considered public domain.
Legal precedent exists to support this concept.
The Happy Birthday song is a good example.
Patents and Copyright do expire. This is outright theft.
Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you! Sue me.
This is the type of crap that really pisses me off. Regrettably we’ve done it ourselves. In order to pick up that last extra 5% margin we outsource manufacturing to China and India. Within 3 months it gets knocked off and the market gets flooded with cheap knock-offs. My message to guys out there, especially the folks designing garments, bite the bullet and work on a thinner margin. Make that up with a focused and aggressive marketing and sales plan. Achieve economies of scale and do your manufacturing right here in river city. You’ll have better control of your quality, you’ll reap the benefits of your investment and your merchandise will have a better contribution margin (if you don’t know what that is have your CPA run you through it). Bring back manufacturing; you’ll be glad you did, and don’t expect legal remedy from the ITC.
For the companies that actually do a good bit of SOF work economies of scale are very difficult. You get used to doing manufacturing runs of 200 or less and to make up the tooling and line reset costs for that amount of production you have to increase your prices. There is a limit to what everybody will pay for the next cool widget. For our non Berry Amendment compliant production my company gets around those quality control factors by hiring disabled vets to do our quality control but we are in an area that produces lots of veterans and where it is relatively inexpensive to live. Not everybody is in that situation. For one particular product that is finally starting to sell we gave out hundreds of test samples. That made us better because our gear was run through its paces and we got to improve based on feedback from end users but you have to make that money back somewhere or the company goes out of business.
Some years ago a womans clothing chain in Canada copied CF cap badges and were selling them as brooches. DND put a big stop to it. On top of it they were bad copies.
You can tell right away that it’s not real multicam. If it were real, it would be a $15.99 bookmark, and it would have some kind of molle webbing on it.
I know that I’m probably in the minority here but I don’t see it as the guy taking credit for the Multicam on the bookmark but just the design of the bookmark which is nothing more than a bookmark in Multicam with Top Secret across it. Not too terribly creative but like I said, I don’t think he was trying to take credit for Multicam. Basically the guy who designed this bookmark subscribes to the Andy Warhol school or art and case law has ruled in Warhol’s favor like when he used pictures of a bunch of Campbell’s soup cans in one of his paintings; same thing here, repurposing an existing item to make something new and “original”. As I said, not the most creative but it’s perfectly legal.
Actually no, it’s not the same thing. Dude isn’t creating art, he’s creating money and he isn’t using a picture of an item he’s using a patented design. He hasn’t altered it, he has just placed two words over a portion of it.
While that may be true I still think that case law would be in his favor, Camplbell’s argument was the same, he was using their IP and copyrighted material but I believe that the courts didn’t see it that way and ruled in Warhol’s favor. I’m not saying that this guy’s bookmark is art but I think that the courts would consider it art for legal purposes. The way I see it, the worse you can accuse this guy of is a lack of creativity and originality which is probably why he’s making a living designing bookmarks, if this bookmark is indicative of his other work then it’s doubtful that he can get a better graphic design job.
One other thing, this artist isn’t really the one to blame, near as I can tell he’s not selling it himself, he designed it for Peter Pauper Press who he’s either an employee of or works freelance for. So if you want to blame anybody for potentially copyright violation it’s this Peter Pauper Press that’s making these bookmarks, someone in their company signed off on it and thought it would be ok to send to press and then sell. If you, or anybody else, has a real issue with they do have their web address printed on the back of the bookmark, you can always file a complaint with them and/or forward their address to Crye.
Like I said, Crye didn’t license this. They are aware.
At one point at least, there were some officially licensed MC books and bookmarks here in Canada: http://www.greyops.net/2011/10/multicam-for-masses.html
I checked with David on this. He doesn’t really care.
Update: Crye actually sent him samples to scan, and doesn’t require a license to use that pattern unless you are making clothing. So no issue here.