airsplat

It’s not a big secret at the moment as the news has been doing the rounds on the local circuits, but Glock (or more specifically their legal team) are currently going after AirSplat. My understanding is that the new lawsuit is about the same old trade dress argument. It would appear that Glock quite simply goes not want any toy replicas that look vaguely close to their designs out there and Kent and his company are now in their sights.

The guys at AirSplat added a blog post and have sent the link over to me to highlight their position.

A lot has changed since the first plastic BB munching machines started to come out of Hong Kong all those years ago via the old brightly coloured (and badly translated) websites. There has been true innovation with a gradual move towards genuinely licensed products at a tiered cost level from the readily available mass produced value products up to the true works of art at a higher cost.

Largely the gradual changes over the years have all been for the best, but big lawsuits tend to do nothing but reduce customer choice, destroy family businesses and fill the pockets of lawyers around the world.

There’s also a helpful post over at the Firearm Blog about what’s going on with some sensible comments on it.

Stand your ground – Glock v AirSplat, Goliath’s attempt to crush David and his community

A very famous quote dating back to WWII fitting for this situation:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out– Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out– Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out– Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me–and there was no one left to speak for me.

The point of this poem by Martin Niemoller refers to a time when speaking out loud and standing up for one’s rights could result in death.

In today’s civilized world, we live a very different world. “Stand Your Ground”, which I’m sure many people are familiar with, entails the right for someone to stand their ground and protect both themselves and their property when confronted with life or safety threatening force. It’s an Americanism that many people in the US firmly believe in and live by.

In today’s civilized world, we live a very different world. “Stand Your Ground”, which I’m sure many people are familiar with, entails the right for someone to stand their ground and protect both themselves and their property when confronted with life or safety threatening force. It’s an Americanism that many people in the US firmly believe in and live by.

In today’s busy and robust world, there are many battles being fought. And in the last 5 years there has been a huge surge of “patent trolls”, entities litigating on patents in hopes of extorting a settlement fee out of defendants unable to litigate. Sometimes they are more generically referred to as IP (Intellectual Property) Trolls which sometimes involves trademarks, patents, or copyright. A simple google search reveals articles from NY times, Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Wired, and many more that estimate costs to consumers of $30 billion² over the last 5 years.

Recent litigation involving large companies such as Over Stock, New Egg, Geico, Google, Blizzard, Nintendo, and the list goes on. Complaints (lawsuits) by trolls are always make absurd and unreasonable claims which are over broad and all encompassing, such as patents to transfer data through the air (wifi), buttons next to pictures of items on a website (add to cart), or copying data off a device onto a portable offsite storage (on line backup). In affect they punish any sort of innovation or advancement in technology, as Sir Richard Branson recently put, “If you can’t innovate, litigate. Are entrepreneurs being prevented from innovating?”

To make matters worse, there are contingency firms such as Continental Enterprises (CE) who will phish (with a “ph) for deals. In fact this firm is so hated it has garnered heated opinions from many sites […]

(AirSplat)

Read the full article at their website here.