It is so tricky. There are different regimes and they are so closely specified, case to case, that transgressions are frequently not worth pursuing legally.
Thinking of the Skookum as crafted, as an art object, something that kind of aligns with principles of making that are valued in bushcraft: Different types of standard apply in the arts at the same time. Some are legal issues, like copyright, others are to do with the perceived value of original or copied things and are resolved in the market. That's to say there are objective infringements (i.e. legally resolvable) and subjective infringements (eg. what someone might be prepared to pay for a painting at auction), each of which may be arbitrated, in the end, financially.
If you want to quote a line from say a poem or especially a song in an academic or any other essay and publish it, it will cost you a lot, often prohibitive amounts, especially to individual writers. Less so for large corporations. So, you can write down 'Tutti Frutti, oh rootie', publish it and you'll be fine. But if you then attribute it to Little Richard, you open yourself up to copyright infringement.
(Little Richard happens to be one of those figures who more or less invented rock & roll, but benefitted from it hardly at all.)
So, there might be a case that if someone copies a Skookum Bushtool and calls it someting else, makes it look a little different, it could avoid actual infringement. We already knew this, I think. But we have names for people who do that. We call them copyists, second-rate or derivative (if we are being polite) or an actual godsend, if we want a cheap version of something (or want to hear a song performed live in a pub). In a sense all clones, fakes, copies and forgeries are OK so long as there is no direct, provable infringement. But, we also know that its not OK, not really, not in the real world. We don't really think that it is OK. Unless of course, as individuals, we don't much care or it particularly suits us not to think about it, even argue against it.
What is disappointing about this area is, first, we are talking about small-scale, knife makers; one-man operations. These aren't wealthy corporations who make exclusive objects and then price them out of the hands of those that can't afford them, only to release a cheaper, shoddier, licensed version later. My point is that, in a sense, Rod 'Skookum' Garcia is one of us. He isn't the owner of a major business. The second reason to groan here is the speed with which we are able to turn to lawyerin' when we want a cheap clone of something, but otherwise clap wildly when someone invents some iconic thing that fits in with our particular set of interests. Of course, in Garcia's case, we are doing both things simultaneously.
We don't know if Garcia and/or Kochanski have/had a copyright on the Skookum. If they do/did, we don't know the nature of it, or why they seem not to have exercised it. If they don't have an agreement, maybe they just thought people would be civil and ordinarily decent about things. Possibly jaded, maybe they thought it simply wasn't worth it; copyright protections being so easy to slide round.
There's another ironic dimension to this. The copies of the Bushtool that I have seen are often more expensive than Garcia's. That might put the whole issue in a nutshell.
Thinking of the Skookum as crafted, as an art object, something that kind of aligns with principles of making that are valued in bushcraft: Different types of standard apply in the arts at the same time. Some are legal issues, like copyright, others are to do with the perceived value of original or copied things and are resolved in the market. That's to say there are objective infringements (i.e. legally resolvable) and subjective infringements (eg. what someone might be prepared to pay for a painting at auction), each of which may be arbitrated, in the end, financially.
If you want to quote a line from say a poem or especially a song in an academic or any other essay and publish it, it will cost you a lot, often prohibitive amounts, especially to individual writers. Less so for large corporations. So, you can write down 'Tutti Frutti, oh rootie', publish it and you'll be fine. But if you then attribute it to Little Richard, you open yourself up to copyright infringement.
(Little Richard happens to be one of those figures who more or less invented rock & roll, but benefitted from it hardly at all.)
So, there might be a case that if someone copies a Skookum Bushtool and calls it someting else, makes it look a little different, it could avoid actual infringement. We already knew this, I think. But we have names for people who do that. We call them copyists, second-rate or derivative (if we are being polite) or an actual godsend, if we want a cheap version of something (or want to hear a song performed live in a pub). In a sense all clones, fakes, copies and forgeries are OK so long as there is no direct, provable infringement. But, we also know that its not OK, not really, not in the real world. We don't really think that it is OK. Unless of course, as individuals, we don't much care or it particularly suits us not to think about it, even argue against it.
What is disappointing about this area is, first, we are talking about small-scale, knife makers; one-man operations. These aren't wealthy corporations who make exclusive objects and then price them out of the hands of those that can't afford them, only to release a cheaper, shoddier, licensed version later. My point is that, in a sense, Rod 'Skookum' Garcia is one of us. He isn't the owner of a major business. The second reason to groan here is the speed with which we are able to turn to lawyerin' when we want a cheap clone of something, but otherwise clap wildly when someone invents some iconic thing that fits in with our particular set of interests. Of course, in Garcia's case, we are doing both things simultaneously.
We don't know if Garcia and/or Kochanski have/had a copyright on the Skookum. If they do/did, we don't know the nature of it, or why they seem not to have exercised it. If they don't have an agreement, maybe they just thought people would be civil and ordinarily decent about things. Possibly jaded, maybe they thought it simply wasn't worth it; copyright protections being so easy to slide round.
There's another ironic dimension to this. The copies of the Bushtool that I have seen are often more expensive than Garcia's. That might put the whole issue in a nutshell.
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