I like the stock designs of some of the top builders. When having a custom stock built is it ok to copy someone else's design.

May I suggest that you ask first.

J.D.
for Riflebuilders.com

Ditto!

sdh,

where would one find copies of fisher's full scale drawings? i think they would be fascinating to examine! perhaps if other custom gunmakers out there feel protective of their proprietary designs they should consider trademarking them.

I agree with the others. I would ask. I believe you will find the stockmakers very willing to share.

Dangerous territory...and different methods.

There was a feller who was at one time pantographing Ottmars stock and reproducing as Ottmar rifles. I don't know how many were made, but if it was one it was too many.

Copying a characteristic design of a gunmaker (cheekpiece shape or moldings and what have you) is certainly a no-no.

That said. The average hobby gunmaker looks at, let's say a Wiebe, and decides to make one look like that. Odds are there will be a few similarities at best.

Like they said " Ask first". Be prepared for a tirade...hehe!

Imitation is said to be the sincerest form of flattery, isn't that so?

I don't think that ANY of us can have a patent, whether legal or ethical, on a particular shape unless that shape is closely associated with a VERY particular and individualistic product in the mind of the public. The Coke bottle is a good example as is the Mercedes 3-pointed star but....a cheekpiece? A wrist angle? A comb nose? I don't think so.

Pantographing an entire stock shape OTOH is, in my mind at least, closely akin to intellectual piracy (except in this case it's artistic piracy, G). And passing the result off as an original is fraud, of course. Nowadays it's a FEDERAL fraud.

Asking permission from the creator is IMO a necessary and courteous formality ESPECIALLY if pantographing; although maybe not strictly legally necessary, it informs the creator that A)his work is being copied and B)it's being copied by someone who's reasonably courteous and civilised.
Regards, Joe

I thought one of the chief charastics of a custom builder was that his/her stocks were custom. Each one was a unique one of a kind designed to fit the specific customer?

That being said I recently read that duplicating the Mona Lisa would not be difficult for a gifted artist.........that the genius was in doing it the first time.......after that its mainly engineering so to speak.

So with custom stocks is the value in the pattern or the time to make it?

Extremely difficult if not IMPOSSIBLE to Patent a Stock Design .Change grip cap or butt plate new design !.

So copying isn't a legal issue ; I would ASK FIRST as it's a matter of personal ethics as well as

Courtesy . Top quality stock makers are Artisans and one really will never hurt them or duplicate their

work . IMO ;

I said Trademark not Patent. Perhaps Copyright is more appropo. Afterall, copyright legally attached at the moment of creation, but it is always wise to place the public on notice via the filing of a copyrighted design with the USPTO. An example which comes to mind is the Echols Legend stock.

quote:

Originally posted by Scrollcutter:
Dangerous territory...and different methods.

There was a feller who was at one time pantographing Ottmars stock and reproducing as Ottmar rifles. I don't know how many were made, but if it was one it was too many.

Copying a characteristic design of a gunmaker (cheekpiece shape or moldings and what have you) is certainly a no-no.

That said. The average hobby gunmaker looks at, let's say a Wiebe, and decides to make one look like that. Odds are there will be a few similarities at best.

Like they said " Ask first". Be prepared for a tirade...hehe!

To me, the key is whether your intent is merely imitation (which IS flattering) vs. the onerous crime of counterfitting and selling the work as the originator's own.

quote:

Originally posted by SDH:

Ever since then I've felt that if a guy was good enough to copy my work, he probably would want to do his own style anyway??

That was what I was thinking as well. If one were good enough to copy, he would be good enough to stand on his own merrits.
On the other hand how many stockmakers make a stock to replicate the early English makers and are justifiably proud to call it thier own work. It takes the same skill to make either your own style or someone elses depending on the clients needs - wants.

Von Gruff.

Has a question like this ever come up of those who duplicate Oberndorf bolt handles...?

And how many of you have ever designed something on your own, only to later find that someone else had the same inspiration? Has happened to me many times.

quote:

Originally posted by Howard:
So with custom stocks is the value in the pattern or the time to make it?

YES!

Coming up with a good pattern from scratch takes a little work.

I've had several requests to use a fiberglass stock as a pattern on my duplicator. I usually tell the person requesting to call the company that made the glass stock and ask them if it would be ok. And, IF they secure this blessing, to put me in contact with the person giving the blessing to make sure I can get this in writing.

Can't say I've ever had a reply.

From a distance, there are many stocks that follow a similar theme. Up close & personal, there are many distinct differences that different makers employ.

let me see if I can make more trouble. what about the flier that pays for the 4000 dollar stocking of his Mauser? he gets it, it fits him like a glove and he's ecstatic. bit can't afford to have all his standard guns pro stocked. would the stockmaker bless his copying his stock for his other rfles? in other words, does the client own their stocks design (after all the measurements, cast etc should be unique to them) or does the craftsman own design? (my understanding is you'd never pantograph a fine stock because of damage, I'm just askng to further the discussion )

I think it depends on if it is close or an exact copy. There was a thread here several months ago where someone showed a pic of, I believe, a Westley Richards 375. Someone wanted the same stock on a custom gun. Would that be legitimate? Or if you have an original H&H or other famouse maker, and want another rifle stocked like it, would it be all right to send your original to be duplicated for another rifle?
I think that if you ask you would probably get the blessing of most makers. Now I do agree that doing the copying and selling them is wrong.

I should like to ask this of our expert stock Artisans : James , Duane ,Jim ,JD

and these names are in NO PARTICULAR ORDER . I have seen there work and that's why I'm asking .

Have any of you ever Patented a Stock Design , or applied for a patent ?.

I'm not sure of Savages Accustock being patented trademark YES, Patent ???.

http://www.savagearms.com/accuracy/accustock/

Savage was certainly not the first folks to Machine an Aluminum bedding unit into a stock !.

I know a machinist who built his own rifle and embedded a complete Aluminum Carriage of sorts into a

Wooden Stock well over 25 Years ago . I personally watched him build it .

His infamous words of wisdom too me were ; He who manufactures first and often WINS , PERIOD !!!.

An again personally having gone down the road to patent infringement proceedings

HE WAS ABSOLUTELY CORRECT !. Judge gave the company in question 6 months to deplete stock and

cease and desist in the interim we settled and sold out too them !.

quote:

Originally posted by Doc224/375:
He who manufactures first and often WINS , PERIOD !!!.

An again personally having gone down the road to patent infringement proceedings

HE WAS ABSOLUTELY CORRECT !.

TRUER WORDS WERE NEVER SPOKEN (unfortunately...?)!!!!

If I wanted a wood stock to match my Echols stock I need to ask Darcy or have him do it. Thanks for the info I was not sure of proto call.

quote:

I'd get a set of Jerry Fisher's full scale drawing if I were you. They were meant to be copied.

quote:

May I suggest that you ask first.

Mr. Fishers drawings are sold by Midway and Brownells. He drew them for guys like me to keep from turning valuable walnut into kindling.

quote:

Originally posted by Howard:
I thought one of the chief charastics of a custom builder was that his/her stocks were custom. Each one was a unique one of a kind designed to fit the specific customer?

That being said I recently read that duplicating the Mona Lisa would not be difficult for a gifted artist.........that the genius was in doing it the first time.......after that its mainly engineering so to speak.

So with custom stocks is the value in the pattern or the time to make it?

From the Sturtevant website

"After all your options have been made then we need to fit the stock to your body. We measure each part of your body that contacts the firearm and we take over 25 measurements into account when building your stock. We take things into account that many other makers do not such as: your cheekbone height, ring/finger size, shoulder pocket position, neck length, and relative eye position. We strongly encourage you to visit our plant so that we can personally fit you, but if you are not able to be fitted here we can send our stock fitting sheet to a qualified gunsmith that is near you. We are only able to guarantee a perfect fit to your body if we did the fitting, but if we are working from measurements we will guarantee the stock will meet the measurement sheet specifications exactly."

SDH, it would be nice to think that your custom Fox projects and the Double Shotguns book were the inspiration for starting a trend or fashion, not just plagarism. As you related with your story about the low wall copy, to the informed observer the differences will be apparent.

Please don't get carried away with all the design stuff, and all the unique features of all the custombuilders products.
Basicaly more than 99.?% of details has been seen before in other contents.
If you go to 10 different top gustommakers, and want them to make you a "perfekt fitt" stock, they most likely comes up with 10 different layouts. most of the 10 layout will fitt you acceptably to werry good.
A lot of what i see from many top custombuilders, seems a lot retro, meening that they often go for an old/historical design, actualy adding werry little realy new. BUT they doo their "copying" in a WEERY TALLENTED AND WERRY QUALIFIED WAY.

SDH actualy said it himselv. I go truogh a lot of literatures to get inspiered, and then i come up with my own version. That is excactly what most doo, and that is how it has always been.And should bee.
The negative version could be told like this.
I look truogh a lot of acceable info, and decide what i want to COPY parts from.

For decades it has always been accepted and widely practiced to do copies of original stock"designs". Basicaly because it was the only way to get replacementstocks for damaged/broken weapons. without ruining the overall look of a weapon. I guess that is what is known as "restoration"

My advice to the "designers": If anyone bothers to "copy" or get inspiered from your woork/designs. Be proud;;;;; and happy that you actualy contributed to the evolvment of pretty tools.

Most pantograph copying leeves you with that mutch woork on inletting and final shaping, that it could hardly bee called copying.

To be provokative:
The unique and personal designs is basicaly only new and unique, because they haven't been interesting enough to be produced
( i ame not talking about the quality of the work, only about the "designs")

Firstly, I personally would never attempt to patent, copyright or trademark any of my own stock designs, period, nor would I ever deny permission for anyone else to use my ideas. This has already happened many times (permission) and I always take it as a compliment to my work and a favor that won't cost me a cent to grant. The Golden Rule.

IMO the custom stock BELONGS to the client; design, dimensions, curves, finish, shape, fit, everything BELONGS TO THE CLIENT NOW, and he can do with it whatever he wants. If he wants to duplicate it exactly, fine. However if he then tries to claim that the new stock was my work, why then My Brother the Egotistical Attorney will be in touch!

Interesting comment: Steve showed us the left-side view and told us the story of his cute little low wall but he didn't show the right side of the butt, where he had installed a small round cap box for carrying spare cartridges. His rifle looks much like a Winchester factory special order, and I myself have been building these-type rifles for close to 30 years now. Even had plans for the same little cap box, had even bought one and put it in the low wall stash box for the next project!

Of course when I saw Steve's cap box, I put THAT particular custom touch on the back burner, haven't even considered my own little cap box since. Yeah, it WOULD look mighty good, but somehow I just can't do it now, at least not to a low wall that would look so much like a copy of Steve's. And yeah, various cute little trap doors are kinda/sorta an unofficial trademark of most of my work at present, but still.....

However there IS one of Steve's practices that I WOULD like to copy, and that's his inset gold touchmark. I'm very grateful to Steve for showing the rest of us how he does it!
Regards, Joe

There is a difference between imitation, replication, and just flat out duplication with the intent to deceive.

If a certain stock maker had features unique to their design. then yes I would ask if I wanted a near exact copy. But for the most part there are basic shapes and styles out there that can be tweeked to fit the shooter (as all stocks are designed to be) and will not look like any one's specific design. Take the american classic custom shape. There must be a million variations just on basic shape alone let alone real differences such as fore end tip, grip cap, butt plate/ recoil pad, cheek piece, etc...

A gun stock is simply to complex to patent and then even if it was near impossible to prove infringement. But still unless you are going to build a generic design with a few signature features I would ask first.

(Edit) I would Ask out of respect more then a potential perceived theft of original design.

Hmmm… This thread has me puzzled a bit. I’m sensitive to theft of intellectual property, but frankly there just isn’t much new under the sun out there that hasn’t been done a million different times by thousands of different builders. (with one exception I’ll get to later.) Let’s break it down:

DESIGN – Let’s say you hire a custom stocker who measures your skull circumference, ocular socket depth, and ‘social finger’ diameter in order to build you a perfectly fit stock. The result will be custom for you, but it will still have certain basic dimensions in pitch, drop, LOP, etc. that unless you are a sideshow freak, will undoubtedly fit thousands of other guys quite well too. The builder would have been compensated for all design labor and does not have exclusive rights to either your measurements, or the resulting dimensions of the finished product. I see absolutely no legal, moral, or ethical issues with taking that stock to another builder and asking them to make a stock with the same dimensions, or doing it yourself.

However, if you asked them to slap it on a duplicator I think you are getting into an ethical gray area.

Think of it this way, if you had a tailor make you a custom business suit you could go to another tailor later on have them stitch you a similar one using the same neck, sleeve, and chest measurements. You could even put it on and say “I would like it shaped to fit like this.” However, if you removed all the stitching and had this new tailor actually trace the pattern of each individual piece then you are in effect stealing the intellectual property of the original designer. Robbing his unique interpretation of how to adapt your measurements to a final product.

STYLE – I have looked at tons of gun porn, and as stated above there just ain’t much truly new or different out there. I’m pretty sure that nobody can lay claim to a certain grip cap angle, cheek piece shape, or Fleur di lis style. I have a folder on my computer full of photos I’ve saved of neat little stylistic treatments that I periodically mull over to pick and choose a combination that I think would make a pleasing, tasteful blend on a custom stock. If anybody thinks that a certain builder has exclusive domain over a certain feature which would require permission to duplicate, then please provide a specific example.

The exception I alluded to above was a recent post where it appeared Duane Weibe was driving a splitting wedge into the fore end of a stock blank. I scratched my head, scrolled a little further, and my jaw hit the spacebar when I saw the end result was a beautifully shaped Schnabel with an ebony inlaid wedge. The effect was stunning, and the most original thing I have seen in recent memory. Maybe it’s been done like that before, maybe not.

In any case, it’s the first time I’d seen one like that and my first thought was that I’d like to try doing it myself. Until I got to this thread…

Then I had reason to pause.

So, Duane, if this is indeed an original style that you just came up with, would I have your permission to attempt this on one of my home projects at some time in the future? I have no intent to produce stocks of this type for sale, and it would delusional of me and insulting to you to even suggest that I might be capable of passing it off as your work.

I have a question - If I ask my gunbuilder to build a bolt handle just like the one on an early H&H sporter do either he or I have an obligation to get permission from H&H? By building one it detracts nothing from the original H&H rifles and One could argue that by doing so it adds to their mystique and value by making them better known.
This same type of argument also goes on among knife builders as well. I was told a story by knife makeing legend Kuzan Oda about a guild meeting where two top makers were argueing about who "stole" who's design. Kuzan had just been visiting a local museum where a thousand year old knife was on display that was virtually identical to the one the builders were argueing about. He took both parties to the museum and showed them that when dealing with hand built tools there is very little that is really new.
Every maker eventually borrows an idea or copies a style from somewhere and if it is good others will eventually adopt it.

Phil is right.....There's NOTHING new under the sun! Remember when Harley Davidson tried to patent their distinctive sound? LOL! Further, what was it Picasso is rumoured to have said..."Good artists borrow, but great artists steal"? Not to be too controversial, but being that there are some truly GREAT artists on this site working in the realm of stocks, engraving, and other metalwork, I suspect most have little room to whine if someone copies their work ...which let's face it, is really at most a modification (though perhaps a damned impressive one) of previous masters' rifles.

JMHO

I read articles by Keith Stegall in the mid 1950's when I started making stocks from blanks. He had an influence on my future in stockmaking. I talked to him on the phone and bought French walnut from him with the country of origin stamped on the blanks.

I think you guys are getting too deep into who can do what with someones custom stock. I don't feel that anyone has a right to any type of stock made because it has been made before.

The wedge type forend tips were made by me over forty years ago. I have pictures of some of these stocks taken for my files.

When you work for a company doing general gunsmithing you can only build about 3 custom guns a year in the off season.



The Sako in 17 Rem of Birdseye maple and the tip is less the 1 inch thick. Made over 40 years ago

The second picture is a yama wood Sako in 222 Rem. 28 years ago Heavy stained with water stain to bring out the figure

As a practical matter it is going to be very hard for a stock designer to lay claim to a particular stock design.

There are several issues:

1) When the dispute arises, they would have to be able to prove the design is actually theirs; i.e., that nobody else actually did it before.

2) To patent it, a unique feature or capability has to be identified. Not sure how you wou do that with a stock. Stating my pistol grip is of such a size and radius would be like trying to patent a wooden chair leg.

There seems to be confusion about a Trademarks an Copyrights. Trademarks refer to logos and emblems. Just because you put your logo or emblem on a stock doesn't mean you own the intellectual property/design of the stock.

Now an interesting question is whether a stock could qualify as a work of art like a sculpture does...but I don't think it would because it is more of a functional product and is built to serve a functional purpose.

Occasionally, on this and other forums, I come across threads which approach silliness. This one goes beyond the approach!
It's only a stock! The general design is going to fit within certain parameters and many features are likely to be imitated if not duplicated. This is always true if something works and especially, if it looks good doing it.
The example of the Oberndorf bolt handle is a good one. It's an attractive shape which serves it's purpose very well. Knowing this, when I set out to make a whole bunch of bolt handles, I made a handle very similar to that one. I don't call it an Oberndorf handle and I don't call it a Leeper handle. It's just a handle. Those who bought them from me only seemed to care that it looked OK and worked as a handle should. The same thing applies to stocks, barrel contours, trigger guards or sights. Mostly, I don't sell design; I sell workmanship and time spent. I think the same is true of most makers/gunsmiths.
Often a customer may show me a picture and ask for a rifle like the one illustrated. What he will get is my interpretation of a rifle like the one pictured. It might seem to be a bit of a copy but only because achieving a given task within certain parameters is bound to result in a similar product. Indentical? Not likely. Just similar.
Within the last twenty years or so, we have seen Chinese copies of Mazak lathes (I don't think Mazak even makes a manual lathe anymore). When I first looked at one, I commented that it looked like it had been copied from a blurred photograph. Sadly, this might also describe a Leeper attempt to duplicate a Wiebe or SDH custom rifle! I don't think it's an issue. Regards, Bill.

quote:

Originally posted by Doc224/375:
An again personally having gone down the road to patent infringement proceedings

what patent number, please