IANAL, but aren’t car designs protected under trademark laws, and not patent laws?
On the other hand, it would be rather hard to trademark gun design - most of them are really similar, and their shape is direct result of inner working and ergonomics. Not to mention, it was established many years ago.
Really?
I can spot an XD from a Glock a mile away.
Maybe it’s just me.
If you think about it, it’s not just guns. The common lightbulb pretty much hasn’t changed since it’s conception, and although newfangled bulbs and lamps (halogen, neon, etc…) have emerged, the most common lightbulb is still just a heated wire encased in glass. Because that works, and it’s simple to make.
I’m not a gun expert, but I know the 1911 has a reputation for reliability, ease of maintenance and destructive power. WAG : they’re probably also not all that complex to make and don’t require any phlebotinum - plain ol’ steel and wood for the grip.
FWIW, the world famous AK-47 was designed in… 47. It’s still a very, very popular and reliable rifle, declined in countless variations and copies. Some designs are just good.
Oh, I can tell them apart having seen both of them side by side. If you read what I said before, the first thing that came to mind when I first encountered the gun was that it looked to me like Glock had finally come out with a new gun design. It wasn’t until the shooter let me have a look at it that I realised it wasn’t a Glock.
Even now, knowing that the XD is a Springfield design, I still think it looks far more like a Glock than “coincidence”. Compare this picture of an XD with this picture of a Glock 19 and tell me if you don’t see more than just a passing resemblance between the two guns.
FWIW, I can spot the difference between the Webley Mk IV revolver (pic) and the Enfield No. 2 Mk I revolver (pic) without any trouble at all, and those are two revolvers that damn near are identical for the simple reason that RSAF Enfield nicked the Webley design and just ignored them when they complained.
I know most people can spot the difference between two pictures of guns without much trouble, of course. There’s a big difference between playing “Spot the difference” with comparison pictures and seeing someone at the range with an unfamiliar gun and thinking to yourself “What is that?”, or seeing a gun at the range that you think is a familiar design when it turns out to be something else completely, though…
Well, they’re both black and gun-shaped. You apparently don’t have much experience with modern pistols yet recognized it was different enough to think it was a new design.
Yeah, it’s interesting that handguns have been around for long enough now that they’re very nearly a mature technology- barring some radical innovation in for example materials technology, it’s unlikely that anything more than tweaks will be devised.
And revolvers are still considered good for their simplicity and reliability, for any user who doesn’t expect to have to fire large numbers of rounds at a time. It’s a testament to how refined autoloaders have become that they’re now considered as reliable as a revolver.
A few really old guns are still being made, the 1911 is a special case in my opinion. Except for some niche shooters, the SAA (“cowboy gun”) that most people use is only vaguely similar to the original Colt Peacemaker. Pretty much everything Ruger makes was designed by Bill & team, and since they are a newer company they don’t have a history they have to adhere too like Smith & Wesson.
S&W has their basic revolver design that’s fairly stable, reliable, old, and in demand. They change little things on them, but there’s no real reason to change main designs. They introduce new firearms sometimes, their semi-auto line is fairly fluid and modern.
A reason you’ll hear so much about a few of the older designs is that they’ve been in constant production for so darn long. Millions of 1911’s are around with more being built every day. It’s a good design that generations of people have used and it’s just as good today as it was 98 years ago. The SAA design is popular (in my opinion) only because it’s historic. Single action, difficult to load, uncomfortable grips, but they have that cowboy mystique.
The AR15 is another one that has been used by millions and, while it has some issues, it’s a fun and historically relevant rifle that, because it’s out of patent, is made by many manufacturers driving the price down. 10 years ago I paid $900 for one, before the election you could get one for $800.
If Colt still held the patent on their stuff I couldn’t afford a 1911, an AR15, nor a SAA.
I noticed the last two gun shows here were much more heavily attended that I’ve remembered. Did the outcome of the election cause gun prices to rise?
It seems to be more fear mongering than anything else so far. Lots of retailers are creating false demand by shouting that you need to get high capacity magazines and the like now while you still can. While there are anti gunners galore in the coming administration I think that like Ashcroft’s porn wars that it’s an issue that will take a backseat to more pressing matters for the time being.
And because of the fear mongering they’ve felt obliged to raise prices as well.
Rise isn’t the right word. Skyrocket is more like it. And that’s if you can find what you want. Most backorders are out anywhere from three weeks to 6 months due to all the panic buying.
A new design. By a different manufacturer than the one who was actually making it.
Australia is more than a bit behind the times when it comes to handgun designs- besides our barrel length restrictions, it’s a limited market, the exchange rate doesn’t help, and there’s so much hassle and expense involved in exporting guns from the US and importing them into Australia that the “new” designs only tend to show up here when they drop in price a lot (Glocks, after most of the Police Services here started issuing them), someone gets their act together and markets to the Australian market (Beretta, Glock, and Smith & Wesson), the guns are reasonably priced anyway (Norinco and Taurus), or there are enough people burdened by hefty wallets who are prepared to lighten them by paying for Top Of The Range Stuff (Desert Eagle handguns and specially designed target or competition handguns like the Sig P226-X5, for example).
So yeah, I’m not as familiar with the latest generation of Black Plastic Handguns as I am with the older stuff (My expertise has always been the older military issue stuff), but since it will be quite some time before I can afford a BPH that isn’t a Glock 17A (and even that’s a bit of a stretch), I’m not too worried about it.
People seem to be missing the point I’m getting at here, so I’m going to re-iterate it: I don’t have a problem with the fact that there are lots of M1911 or SAA or Winchester rifle clones on the market at the moment. That’s a great thing for shooters, and competition can help keep prices down- as Bobotheoptimist says, if Colt were the only people allowed to manufacture the M1911 pistol, the SAA, or the AR-15 then considerably fewer people would be able to afford one.
I was just wondering why it was pretty well unique that the firearms industry can make copies of designs from companies that still exist (and in some cases are still producing the design being copied!) and who presumably copyrighted or otherwise protected the design or appearance of their product when they first started producing it.
Also, can we please avoid hijacking this into a “US Gun Politics” discussion? It’s really not pertinent to the OP…
So I didn’t get screwed after all at the gun show buying the Haskell .45 ? 
You weren’t shopping for cars in the 1990s, then. It was something of a challenge telling a Ford Taurus from a Toyota Camry or whatever the Nissan equivalent was based on a quick glance from only one angle.
For all of the 19th century lawsuits over patent violations by various gunmakers (didn’t Smith & Wesson have one that covered all cylinders drilled straight through so at least one maker designed around a cartridge with a step in it?) they were all for the mechanism. In a patent appearance is irrelevant.
If you’re referring to neck-down rounds, those are not typical of revolver calibers.
The .357 Sig, for instance, is not a revolver round, it’s a semi automatic round.
Must have been different here than it was in the US, because most- if not all- of the cars I’ve seen here all look very different from each other. I know bugger all about cars and I can still tell most of them apart without too much trouble.
That’s fair enough. So why can’t gunmakers copyright the appearance of their gun? It strikes me as a bit odd that Mickey Mouse will effectively be under copyright forever, yet the M1911 pistol can be made by any gunmaker who wishes to do so. Again, I don’t think the situation is a bad one, just one of those things that makes you go “Hmmm.”
If you’re talking about the basic looks of the gun, then industrial design rights (not patent) are the usual set of rights that one uses to protect their business. Check the wiki page on design rights. They differ from country to country.
My guess is that either these companies simply neglected to secure design rights, or they figured it wasn’t an important issue to enforce them. People usually buy by brand, not by look. And imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Also, it is possible that one company licensed the design (or the patent) rights from the original owner. That way they can legally make and sell the same design so long as they pay royalties to the owner. I don’t know much about the world of guns though, so I don’t have a definitive answer for you.
I’m well-aware of licence-built copies for guns, so that wasn’t quite what I was thinking of.
I think your earlier “Design Rights” answer is probably closest to the truth: the gunmakers didn’t secure the Design Rights for whatever reason, and now there’s nothing Walther can do to stop FEG in Hungary from making PPK knockoffs. Or, even if there was, it’s ultimately too much hassle for too little return, so it’s just tolerated as long as it’s not eating into their own sales too much.
Never seen a replica? You can build a copy of just about any 20-year-old car you like, as long as you don’t call it the same thing as the original. There are hundreds of companies building replicas of iconic sports cars the Lotus 7*, AC Cobra, Ford GT40, Lamborghini Countach, Ferrari F40…
*Caterham is one of these, but they actually bought the design and tooling from Lotus many years ago.
No… trademarks are for protecting an identifying design or logo, or, to a lesser extent, a cosmetic* design feature.
BMW’s signature kidney grille (it doesn’t look anything like kidneys, but that’s what it’s called) is trademarked- it’s a distinguishing mark which is an established identifier of the BMW brand and company.
I imagine a gunmaker could trade mark an unique visual identifying feature- say, a distinctive grip pattern, or a fluted trigger, or somesuch- but not the look of a particular product.
*cosmetic in the sense that it’s a visual cue, not in the sense that it doesn’t actually do anything. If, for example, having a VW logo on your car granted it magical aerodynamic properties, the VW logo would still be a trade mark.
It has nothing to do with engineers being more rational. The purpose of copyright law and patent law is completely different, as is the scope of protection, as is the role of an author as opposed to an inventor, as is the ability to create new creative works as opposed to useful articles. They aren’t even remotely comparable. There is simply no good reason to let people copy Micky Mouse when there is a conceivably limitless possible range of new characters that could be created. It doesn’t work that way with inventions.
