Knockoffs?

It’s darned nigh impossible to protect a style, in clothing or furniture or automobiles or any number of other things.

I believe that Levi’s has trademarked the decorative stitching pattern on the hip pockets of its blue jeans, for instance, but beyond that, copy away, so long as you don’t call ’em Levi’s. Or so I’ve been told.

A friend had a children’s wear manufacturing business. She once bought a kid’s coat from a department store and had it taken apart and patterns made so she could make her own version, with slight variations.

Every major hat manufacturer back in the day made a Whippet style hat and an Open Road style hat, etc. I have yet to hear of any of those manufacturers going after each legally over it.

Are early Chevy Camaros knockoffs of early Ford Mustangs? Nope, but the “inspiration” is obvious.

Any trademark lawyers in the house? It’s an interesting topic, I think, and one I’d like to know more about.

I did some reading awhile back on the legal dustup over the rights to the Nelson bubble lamps. But apparently it was settled secretly.

belfastboy said:

Was Elvis Presley then a knockoff of the black bluesmen that came before him?

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That is a very good point, and all those credits on the records, like that of Elvis and Norman Petty, does that dilute the records authenticity?

Ask any aficionado of the popular wartime, A2 bomber jacket, for their definition of original, chances are there won't be one definitive response. https://www.thefedoralounge.com/threads/a-2-jacket.55445/
As the A-2s popularity grew, so too did the demand for it. Only aircrewmen could obtain A-2 jackets through regular channels, although a few celebrated nonflying officers like Gens. MacArthur and Patton and Maj. Glenn Miller also procured and wore them. A small "cottage industry" soon appeared, especially in England, to make A-2-style jackets for GIs (including many airborne infantry troops) who otherwise couldn't get one. This was especially true after the Army stopped purchasing new leather jackets in mid-1943, and disappointed airmen were sent to war in the less desirable cloth jackets, or were unable to replace A-2s they had lost or damaged. As a result, some war-era jackets used by World War II airmen are clearly not true to original AAF specifications, though this makes them no less historic.

And on a wartime theme, what is an original Jeep? It is generally accepted that The Willys MB and the Ford GPW, both formally called the U.S. Army Truck, 1⁄4-ton, 4×4, Command Reconnaissance, commonly known as Jeep or jeep and sometimes referred to as G503. But the French built their own.
The Hotchkiss M201 was the standard light transport vehicle used by the French army from shortly after the war until it began retiring them from French service in the 1980s. It started as a World War II Jeep built under license and in many respects was little changed forty years later. In France it is usually simply called “La Jeep”.

belfastboy said:

I worked with a lady that travelled to China regularly to visit family. She would take orders for high end winter parkas with the North Face brand. She claimed they came out of the same factory that produced the legit ones for North Face. North Face price $500, her price $100 and I assume she was making a decent buck for schlepping them back to Canada. I bought them for my mom and nieces and nephews. I would dare anyone to find the difference between the knock off and the one bought in the North Face store. My mom wore hers for years, never wore it out as she died first....before the jacket.

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Also known as ‘genuine fakes’ some come out of the ‘back door’ of the factory during a run of genuine orders while others are made using the same materials and labels a week or so after a genuine order has been fulfilled. These are of course ‘identically similar’ (as my old science teacher used to say), to the real thing and are not to be confused with poor quality fakes.

"None Genuine Without This Signature" was a very common phrase on product labels in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As soon as someone came out with some new thing, whether it was a clothing item, a machine, a box of corn flakes, or a baseball, somoene else would knock it off, usually by tweaking it just enough to avoid the relevant patents. But the presence of W. K. Kellogg's signature, or A. G. Spalding's or L. L. Bean's or whoever's was imagined to be enough to guarantee against imitators. "Beware Of Imitations! Insist Upon The Original! Accept No Substitutes!"

My trade is sewing machines and one of the most iconic pieces of machinery is the black straight stitch singer with memphis decals, no not elvis , capitol city of Egypt , pyramid and sphinx in gold leaf decals. Not once but twice companies have contracted to make these models for singer and after the 50,000 units or whatever they kept running and made another 30,ooo for themselves in sell in greater Mongolia or whatever. Someone once showed me on the internet I could buy these sewing machines in china on the net, for a low as $20.us but I had to take 5000 pieces. The quality of cast iron items in china is very poor, and in the past, I have had bad experiences with the lasting qualities, and some from india weren't much better, some made in tw, left for 20 yrs in storage were better but the supply ran out and I couldn't buy as many as I would have like and each machine had to be loosened up and gone over. Being the last treadle sewing machine dealer in Canada is never dull, and now I use sub amish dealers under my umbrella as a buying group as the manufacturer now wants us to buy minimal 100 units. The next hurdle in that game is putting the next order together and figuring out the logistics for the next order for this fall, factory is running in tw. 59lark

robrinay said:

Also known as ‘genuine fakes’ some come out of the ‘back door’ of the factory during a run of genuine orders while others are made using the same materials and labels a week or so after a genuine order has been fulfilled. These are of course ‘identically similar’ (as my old science teacher used to say), to the real thing and are not to be confused with poor quality fakes.

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Yes, that was my take on it as well and the way it was 'sold' to me.

GHT said:

... what is an original Jeep? It is generally accepted that The Willys MB and the Ford GPW, both formally called the U.S. Army Truck, 1⁄4-ton, 4×4, Command Reconnaissance, commonly known as Jeep or jeep and sometimes referred to as G503. But the French built their own.
The Hotchkiss M201 was the standard light transport vehicle used by the French army from shortly after the war until it began retiring them from French service in the 1980s. It started as a World War II Jeep built under license and in many respects was little changed forty years later. In France it is usually simply called “La Jeep”.

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I recall a discussion I had a few years back with my old-car restoring uncle regarding the all-new steel MGB bodies then available from British Motor Heritage and the all-new first-generation (’65 and ’66 models) Ford Mustang convertible bodies.

He was unequivocal — they’re fakes, as far as he was concerned, even if they are built on the original factory tooling by, or licensed by, the original manufacturer.

This uncle has restored cars on which he has replaced half or more of the sheet steel (one that comes to mind is a ’67 Camaro ragtop left outdoors for several years in Wisconsin, the interior filled with snow in the winters).

Perhaps an old Ford enthusiast can pipe in here and tell me if I’m right or wrong in my suspicion that the number of fake ’32 Ford coupes vastly exceeds that of the originals.

At a car show a few years ago — not a high-end show — I had a pleasant chat with an elderly fellow who built the car he wanted when he was a young man, in the early 1950s — a hot rod built with a reproduction ’30s Ford convertible body and a canvas top with wooden struts. Steel wheels painted red with baby moon hubcaps. A flathead FoMoCo V8 out of an early ’50s Mercury. It was a cool car, and it was obvious that its owner/builder was just tickled to have it.

Another variation on the "knockoff" theme is the application of famous old brand names to substandard products as a way of capitalizing on lingering goodwill those brands might carry for older consumers.

There was a time, for example, when the General Electric and Westinghouse logos were signs of real quality in home appliances. Those brands are meaningless today -- they're simply logos slapped onto whatever cheap import has licensed the use of the names. Same with RCA, Zenith, Crosley, Philco and various other such names in home electronics. The "quality" reputation such brands carried ended, for the most part, in the 1960s, but as long as a cent can be squeezed from them by shady manufacturers, their current owners are more than happy to license them out.

One area where this kind of thing is rampant is the manufacture of vacuum tubes. No matter what the brand on the box, any newly-manufactured tube you buy these days came from factories in Russia, China, or the Czech and Slovak Republics. Famous old American brand names like Tung-Sol and Western Electric, British brands like Mullard, German brands like Telefunken -- they're all products of these plants.

There's even knockoffs of old Soviet brands -- at one time, the "Sovtek" brand of tubes made in the USSR were among the finest in the world. But now, "Sovtek" is just another one of these generic tubes with a famous old logo slapped on the box. It may indeed be Russian-made, but it could just as easily come from China.

59Lark said:

My trade is sewing machines and one of the most iconic pieces of machinery is the black straight stitch singer with memphis decals, no not elvis , capitol city of Egypt , pyramid and sphinx in gold leaf decals. Not once but twice companies have contracted to make these models for singer and after the 50,000 units or whatever they kept running and made another 30,ooo for themselves in sell in greater Mongolia or whatever. Someone once showed me on the internet I could buy these sewing machines in china on the net, for a low as $20.us but I had to take 5000 pieces. The quality of cast iron items in china is very poor, and in the past, I have had bad experiences with the lasting qualities, and some from india weren't much better, some made in tw, left for 20 yrs in storage were better but the supply ran out and I couldn't buy as many as I would have like and each machine had to be loosened up and gone over. Being the last treadle sewing machine dealer in Canada is never dull, and now I use sub amish dealers under my umbrella as a buying group as the manufacturer now wants us to buy minimal 100 units. The next hurdle in that game is putting the next order together and figuring out the logistics for the next order for this fall, factory is running in tw. 59lark

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In the early 1990's the manufacturing company I worked for bought a small valve manufacturer that was on the brink of bankruptcy. They were a US east coast manufacturer that could not compete with the offshore mfg cast iron imports. The design was leading edge but the price point too high for the market. We sent a man to China to source Cast Iron foundries with the thought of casting the valve bodies in China with the assembly to continue in the US factory. The man went on an exhaustive tour of China, venturing up the Yangtze River to parts unknown in search of foundries. He returned with the news that it was a no go. The conditions and quality of the castings were abysmal and the rejection rate too high to make for any monetary savings. He described conditions as being pre industrial revolution. Men, in singlets, flip flops on their feet and not a piece of PPE in sight. All castings and each step required done by hand labour. I am thinking that now 30 years on these Chinese foundries are probably all state of the art, robotized, modernized and gleaming entities.

Yes, Liz, same with most household appliances, large and small.

I bought an original Sunbeam T9 toaster not so long ago for something like 15 bucks. The thing is older than me by a good decade or so, maybe more. Works fine. In the downstairs unit is a GE four-slicer — a thrift store find, if memory serves — that dates from the late-’60s or early ’70s, judging from its style. So 50 years old, more or less.

These days I hear that a refrigerator can be expected to last 10 to 15 years. Seriously? My monitor-top GE, made in the 1920s, was still chugging along fine when I sold it (wish I hadn’t). I see the prices on the new appliances I get routed past at Blowe’s and I think, good god, man, a couple three or four G’s for a fridge you’ll be replacing before you wear your car out?

tonyb said:

Yes, Liz, same with most household appliances, large and small.

I bought an original Sunbeam T9 toaster not so long ago for something like 15 bucks. The thing is older than me by a good decade or so, maybe more. Works fine. In the downstairs unit is a GE four-slicer — a thrift store find, if memory serves — that dates from the late-’60s or early ’70s, judging from its style. So 50 years old, more or less.

These days I hear that a refrigerator can be expected to last 10 to 15 years. Seriously? My monitor-top GE, made in the 1920s, was still chugging along fine when I sold it (wish I hadn’t). I see the prices on the new appliances I get routed past at Blowe’s and I think, good god, man, a couple three or four G’s for a fridge you’ll be replacing before you wear your car out?

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My mother and father bought the family home in 1949 and purchased the fridge and stove. My mother was still using the stove in 2014 when she passed. We sold the house and left the stove so I assume it is still working today. The fridge was tossed sometime in the late 1990's ...it was still working but the rubber seal was decayed and we could not find a replacement. She still had the chrome kitchen table and chairs and ALL the other furniture. Although she did the 1960's thing and covered up the hardwood floors with shag carpet. I bought a Sears stove (mid range price point) that lasted me a whole 4 years before the controller went wonky. $500 to replace when the stove cost me $600. Not wanting to throw good money after bad we bought a new one.

Retro fridges are now a “thing.” Smeg’s offering, with 1950s styling and dimensions, retails for something like $2,500. A person can get a perfectly serviceable used fridge for next to nothing if he doesn’t mind putting a little effort into it.

I’d much prefer a gas stove to the glass-topped electric job that was in this place when we bought it. There’s a gas water heater and furnace in the basement utility room directly under the kitchen, so running the gas lines wouldn’t be cost prohibitive. But I hesitate to spend upwards of a grand (or more) on a stove that can’t be expected to last more than a decade. Far better to find one made 70 or more years ago, as a friend did many years ago. It’s still in daily use.

The thing with modern refrigerators, no matter what the casing looks like, is that the compressors are underengineered to fail within a "planned obsolescence" amount of time. This is true even of "professional grade" equipment -- I've had several commercial-grade drink coolers at the theatre fail after five to seven years of use, and finally got to the point where I just said the hell with it and called up the Coca-Cola service department and told them to send over one of their all-logoed-up models. When it dies, they haul it off and put in a new one, and I presume the old one gets junked.

My Kelvinator, manufactured in November 1945 with an enormous sealed-in-oil "Polarsphere" compressor, is way overengineered for the size of the box, and that's why it's still running at the age of 75. I've owned it since 1988, and it's been running continously for thirty-two years without any mechanical issues whatever. In that same time my mother has gone thru four "not worth repairing" modern fridges.

There comes a time when you have to ask yourself if "modern conveniences" are worth being a sucker.

For me (and with full consideration of my legal training, as well as personal ethics), there are several varieties of knock-off.

1] the outright counterfeit, usually a substandard copy, pretending to be what it is not. D~esigned purely to rip off the unwary, and an outright faked in violation of any applicable intellectual property laws - the classic example being a fake Rolex watch. A variation on this theme is the fake Rolex you buy for a tenner in a Beijing Street market. Nobody has been fooled or ripped off there (nobody seriously believes, or expects you to believe, it is a legitimate product); Rolex have not lost out (anyone who could actually be in a position to buy "the real thing" is not going to be buying such a fake). Nonetheless, it's complete trademark infringement. Unlikely to be design right or other copyright infringement if it's one that's been around for some time.

I'm not a fan of either of these, though I'm less bothered by the second.

2] The lookey-likely. The Lorex watch. Copies an existing design, however well, which is protected and without permission (e.g. based on stolen schematics)- BAD. Copies an existing design but does it within the law - up to the buyer. Does brand matter? Sometimes for me it does. Other times, not at all. Once the "original" loses the protection of law and has to compete on brand alone, it's all open. I don't buy Levis jeans because I can get jeans that are, for me, better at a better price elsewhere.

3] The reproduction of something old that is no longer made. For me, "vintage" is all about the style. In general, it's a rare thing for me where the value in ownership is its authenticity - money no object, I'd much rather a wardrobe full of bespoke suits from Henry Poole to 1930s patterns than a wardrobe full of original 30s suits. Being "original" has no talismanic value for me. I want things of that style for regular and hard use every day - for me, it;'s not about escaping to or living in the past, but about, as Gustav Temple once said, "preserving what is good about the past, without the bigotry and the blood sports". A prime example in this category is my clutch of Wing Sung 601 fountain pens - basically a new, production version of the original vacuumatic Parker 51. It doesn't pretend to be the real thing. The only "naughty" is the cap using the Parker TM 'arrow' clip on the cap, but that's not the reason I buy it (I'd buy them with a plain clip too). Parker don't make this model any more; even when they did an anniversary tribute some years ago, aside from being eye-wateringly over-priced, it wasn't even what I'd call a "real" 51 - it took cartridges, ffeck'ss!
In this instance, where it's track down an original, if you can find one, and if you can afford it, and if it will fit, and if it can be used daily as you'd want, especially if (like me) you have no space for a 'museum piece' and have to work on keeping a hoarding problem at bay.... well, for me the "knockoff" wins every time. (And fwiw, for me the Wing Sung is a touch better made with nicer components than the original Parker 51!)

GHT said:

There's no bigger miscreant of this practice than large corporations. If you or I did it, we would be labelled plagiarist, quite right too. But when the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation buys the intellectual rights from the receiver, are the cars that they make still the same cars, or can they now call them MG? After all, they own the copyright.

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Here it becomes philosophical. These days, very few "brands" actually manufacture their own whatever. Instead, they outsource, brand and label. By law, if the trade mark holder says "It's a real Fender Telecaster", it's a real Fender Telecaster. Even if it has a vibrtato arm, humbucker pickups, or (worst of all) a six saddle bridge (yuck). Any of those things in the eyes of a hardcore traditionalist can render it no longer a "real" Telecaster. With cars, the VW Beetle is a good example. Volkswagen say the new Beetle is a Beetle - and because they own the TMs, in law it is and they can make it so. To me, it'll always be a Golf in a party dress, with the engine in the wrong end and not ever air-cooled...

Fun fact: The "Gibson Les Paul" that Slash played on Appetite for Destruction and which is credited with bringing the Les Paul "back" after it had become deeply unfashionable among guitar players in the eighties, with sales dropping off in a big way - was a complete fake. It was built by a small scale luthier who specialises in - depending upon your opinion - producing homages to original 1950 instruments that the average person can now never dream of affording (a 1959 Les Paul now sells for upwards of GBP300,000), or creating knowing counterfeits. Often, copyists (whether using the original TM, or their own brand. so it's not a counterfeit - irrespective of buyer knowledge) of famous guitars are building them to a spec that is much closer to the originals than anything made by the legitimate holders of the original brands today. So which is authentic? The original brand, or the better replica?

Gretsch and Mosrite are two brands of guitar built in Japan nowadays. Gretsch has a long history in America. The brand is currently owned by Fender, and they have outsourced the production of the guitars to Japan and Korea, with the pro level stuff being made in Japan. These Japanese Gretsches... arguably knock-offs, with no direct connection to the original company.... and yet they are widely acknowledge to be vastly superior instruments with vastly better QC than the old line in most cases. "Mosrite of California" had completely disappeared by the late 80s, so a Japanese company snapped up the mark and started remaking the guitars - again, often better than the originals. So which is real, the copy labelled Mosrite or the Copy with a different name? Neither? Both?

At some point, it does simply come down to what the buyer is happy with or prefers, and a personal and subjective notion of authenticity.

Some things, I do like to own the "real thing". Others, which I wouldn't endorse a counterfeit, and having owned the real thing I'm perfectly happy with (or even prefer) a legitimate knock-off.

belfastboy said:

My friend brought me back two souvenirs from his trip to China.....one an authentic Hugo Boos t shirt and the other a genuine battery operated Rolex watch.

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The watch is obviously fake (though not because of quartz movement - between 1970 and 2001, Rolex made watches with their own Quartz movement). The HB shirt - if the originals are made in China - is as likely a doubling up of the original order as anything else. Very common out there. The other thing that is often done is to keep patterns from subcontracted runs and make identical copies with a different brand. Absent the TM infringement, and where, asis often the case, there's nothing else to protect, well, what's real and what isn't?

LizzieMaine said:

On the other hand, though, you'll find shady operators who reproduce this equipment with 3-D printed plastic parts, or with inferior components put into authentic-looking casings. If you sell this kind of stuff as novelty items, or as stage props, that's one thing. But if you try to pass them off as authentic, you won't fool a professional sound engineer -- but you might fool a novice eBay-type collector.

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Quite so... though as long as it's an honest new copy of an original no longer in production, then I think we're into the realms of "reproduction" rather than knock-off...

tonyb said:

I’ll never forget a friend mistaking a fake tombstone table radio for a genuine 1920s-vintage original. I’d have thought that slot on the side for cassette tapes might have been a clue.

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It never ceases to amaze me how limited some folks' eye for details can be.

belfastboy said:

I worked with a lady that travelled to China regularly to visit family. She would take orders for high end winter parkas with the North Face brand. .

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Quite so. This sort of thing happens all the time out there. Often, Chinese fakes (not the ones aimed at the tourist market) are as good as or better than the real thing. I remember there was a Chinese iPhone fake back around 2008 that looked exactly like the Apple - but had vastly better spec!

Blackadder said:

Take for example the Levi's trucker jacket

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With clothes, it's much more pronounce as there's significantly less protection. The law assumes that clothing design is wholly utilitarian, so unless you produce some new wodnerfabric or fastening mechanism that can be patented, the only thing you have is the possibility of a limited duration design right that protects the patterns (not the finished item), and the branding (Trade mark).

belfastboy said:

Was Elvis Presley then a knockoff of the black bluesmen that came before him?

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Elvis was an homage. Led Zeppelin, now they were not only knock-offs, they were outright fraudster counterfeits.

tonyb said:

It’s darned nigh impossible to protect a style, in clothing or furniture or automobiles or any number of other things.

.

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You're bang on with the TM issue. Copyright is next to useless for clothes as stated above, so trade mark and branding are everything. Your friend did it the right way with that coat. If I wanted to copy a Schott jacket, say, I can legally buy one and take it apaprt, create a pattern by reverse engineering, perfectly legally. If I xerox their patterns and use those (for a model for which the patterns have not been around long enough to have outrun protection), I'm in trouble.

When it comes to many IP rights - patent and Trade mark among them - companies will often settle out of court rather than risk a judge telling them that there's nothing protectabe, and therefore it's open season. Far better to split the market with one competitor than all of them...

robrinay said:

Also known as ‘genuine fakes’ some come out of the ‘back door’ of the factory during a run of genuine orders while others are made using the same materials and labels a week or so after a genuine order has been fulfilled. These are of course ‘identically similar’ (as my old science teacher used to say), to the real thing and are not to be confused with poor quality fakes.

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Quite so.

LizzieMaine said:

There's even knockoffs of old Soviet brands -- at one time, the "Sovtek" brand of tubes made in the USSR were among the finest in the world. But now, "Sovtek" is just another one of these generic tubes with a famous old logo slapped on the box. It may indeed be Russian-made, but it could just as easily come from China.

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Back in the early 90s, Sovtek valves were the holy grail for guitar players. They also made great amps and pedals in the 90s (I have a Big Muff Fuzz that's apparently seriously collectable now, especially in its condition). The New Sensor Corporation still owns the TM, but it does get much ripped off. Buying them from trusted guitar equipment suppliers is the way to go - though doubtless not so cheap.

I have a Sovtek 6SN7 as the vertical oscillator in my television set, built in 1954. It's a very fussy TV, and out of all the tubes I tried, inclduing six different NOS RCA tubes, the Sovtek was the only one that gave correct picture geometry. "Wide Is Our Motherland" indeed.

Edward said:

(I have a Big Muff Fuzz that's apparently seriously collectable now, especially in its condition.)

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The mind boggles.

GHT said:

The mind boggles.

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Naughty!



Not mine, but same model... Proudly built in Russian Federation, Comrade!

Among the reasons I much prefer Antiques Roadshow on PBS over other “reality” TV shows is that it calls out its own false information. Right off the top of my head I can think of three occasions when it drew attention to its appraisers being fooled by a fake.

So many (un)reality shows portray their lead characters as possessing expertise they clearly don’t. They’re fed a bit of verbiage about whatever item is in front of them and regurgitate it, as though it were extemporaneous observation. Lousy actors, most of ’em.

It says something that the market value of a fake done so well as to fool people who actually do specialize, who have extensive experience in such matters, is next to nothing, while the real deal might fetch thousands. Many, many thousands, maybe. We love the intangible.

Beware of Wish.com. They're notorious for trying to sell knock offs for the real McCoy name brand. Unless you know that what you're buying is fake from them don't bother spending your money. Wish offers name brand watches at incredibly cheap prices. That's the first red flag. I was going through the site one day and ran across a very nice looking Citizen watch for $10. I have an actual Citizen. Right away I noticed that there was no serial number on the back. Anyway, it was a nice looking watch, and for $10 I got it anyway. When it arrived, it was definitely a fake. It didn't come in a Citizen box and it didn't come with a warranty and there was no serial number on the back. No surprise, though. What I got was a nice looking fake for $10. I even wear it at times. Anyway, Wish sells fake Seikos and Rolexes for higher money at over $100 +. So beware.