[Rhodes22-list] Trailer Measurements

[stan]

Bill, (rough day and I need a change of pace break:)

Thanks Bill, but since this is one of those proverbial "it wasn't planned
that way" non-profit organizations, we make money every time someone does
not buy from us.

I have since divorced myself from the proprietary world.  But in my feistier
days I was rather litigious and took the last company that crossed me all
the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, pro se, at a horrendous cost to them.

I do not know how many companies copied the Rhodes but I am tuned into two
of them.  I told my attorney to make a federal case out of one of them and
he resigned - then called back to say he over-reacted to my being a lawyer
and did agree to switching from state court to Federal Court.  The federal
government frowns on copying things, if you have picked the creator's brains
first.  It is the only time we lost our non-profit status (until we spent
the winnings and returned to our losing ways).  Building something is only
half the business plan - you have to sell it also.  One of the boat copiers
put their imitation Rhodes at a boat show and died.  The company told me
afterwards that I was the only one who could sell that damn boat - they
hadn't realized that, with sailboats at least, you have to love what you
want others to also love.

These days I encourage those who love doing things themselves for the love
of it, to bypass us.  But I have trouble subduing the mean streak in me that
likes hearing of the tribulations of those who bypass GB merely to save
money.

Thanks for coming to our defense anyway.

stan/gbi

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Effros" <bill at effros.com>
To: "The Rhodes 22 mail list" <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
Sent: Monday, July 26, 2004 12:31 PM
Subject: Re: [Rhodes22-list] Trailer Measurements


Herb,

I'm an author who earns a living off my intellectual property.  I think it's
wrong for people to buy what I've written, make a copy, and send the copy to
their friends without paying me for my work.

Stan spent a lot of time and money developing these trailers.  Anyone can
look at them, say "that's a good idea" and copy the concept, and modify
their own trailer, or have someone else build one--to their own
specifications.

But to ask people on the list to measure the trailers they have bought from
Stan, and to send you the measurements, so you can build your own trailer,
or teach someone else how to build these trailers, without paying Stan for
his intellectual property, is wrong, in my view.

I'm sure that is not what you were thinking when you asked the question, and
I do not think badly of you for asking it.  This has come up many times
before, and I only sometimes respond in this way.

But I do think it's wrong, and I haven't said anything about it for a while.

By the way,  there have been people who extended your idea of "send me the
trailer measurements," to "why not copy and sell the whole boat"--let me
borrow your boat, I'll make molds from it, we'll make our own exact copies
of the boat, we'll sell them and split the profit--if we don't have to pay
anything for R&D we can easily sell them for less than Stan can sell them
for.

Essentially that's what you're trying to do in the trailer department, in my
view.

Bill Effros