Its inevitable that these things will happen, when the creators of and idea and or method, belong to places like these (IAP) where most of us are more than happy to share all our secrets and inventions without putting a second though into "production copying"...!
Those that know of this reality and decide to protect their work by copyright and other legal options, are also willing to spend the money and time to do so as these things are complicated to get done, and take a considerable time to activate. Off-course, most of us do not think in developing a business out of the ideas therefore, giving them away free of charge for everyone to use.
What others do with these ideas, is then totally out of the creators control and/or authority to act, and that is just life...!
There is one thing that will always determine the original to a fake/copy and that has been already mentioned by some posters above, quality and unique material, man made composition/touch...!
There is also one other factor that unfortunately, has become rare, particularly to money driven people, and that is, loyalty...! :frown:
I can also understand the opposite of this, when someone just wants/needs to get the best prices regardless of who and where made what...! those making large quantities of pens for lower end markets, require cheap products and those are normally found among the mass production people, no doubt they will have the capabilities to lower prices as a result. Quality control (QC) may be low or non existent in these case but, that becomes not so important when people know that, what they are buying is good enough for those to whom they are selling their pens to...!
I know that my last sentence can sound very different than the intent its refer to and that is, people buying the product see that the pen looks good or identical to some they have seen and liked, elsewhere. They don't know the product's origin and most wouldn't care, is it an original or a fake/copy...??? the price will normally have the answer, the sad thing about all this is that for the person that actually made the pen, his work and effort is not different regardless if the blanks are hand made or copies mass produced, putting the pen maker in a predicament, is the pen maker focussing sales pitch based on the materials and origin or on the quality of how the pen was put together and finish...???
There are many other areas of this subject can could be discussed but, this will do for the moment...!
Disclaimer: These are my own thought and views on a issue that I have being directly involved in the pass more than once, "idea creator" giving it away...!
Cheers
George
:wink:
