(this turns into a bit of a rant at the end - apologies if I offend: don't read it if you hate politics!)
There's probably nothing patentable in the high-end copies of old designs, although modifications may be patentable. The original point of the patent system was to encourage innovation by giving exclusivity to the inventor for a limited time. Prior to that, things were copied immediately they appeared, and ideas themselves had no value unless they could be kept secret (for physical items to be sold, that was impossible). Patents were supposed to expire, so that everyone could copy the idea and all would benefit. It's also legal to make a copy of something patented for your own research and development purposes, as long as you don't use it in any other way. The electronics industry used to do this a lot, all perfectly legally.
Today, designs too are copyright (a different matter). Aggressively copying current designs is illegal, as long as those design features can be proven to have come from the original maker. So anyone who copied a Clifton plane, by using the same green and the word "Clifton" on it somewhere, would be breaking the law, by "passing off" their plane as a Clifton.
Designs as old as Leonard Bailey's are long out of copyright, and making a copy of, say, what we know as a #5, isn't at all illegal. That probably goes for most of the Stanley pre-war catalogue too, and anyway, those designs came from Preston, Bailey etc. originally. Some were designs Stanley bought; some were just copied.
The Chinese aren't immune from copyright law, either. It may be that you can't sue in China itself, BUT people can, and frequently do, go after the importers of knock-offs. Trading Standards do this in the UK a lot. The Chinese designers know that they can't export their designs if their customers risk court.
Finally there is the issue of design licence. Some manufacturers, including the Chinese, agree to take on the cost of tooling-up to make a complex product, if they are allowed rights to sell the product elsewhere under a different name. You see this a lot with small woodworking machines, where the accessories, and often the entire machine, are sold under different, competing brand names.
A good example is small bandsaws. Actually this one is more commonly "OEM-ing" -- putting a brand name, colour scheme, etc. on for the distributor -- but it's a related practice.
This is complicated further by big importers insisting on detail changes to a design, either for quality reasons or to differentiate their product in other ways. Axminster do this, and it's a good thing in my opinion. Commonly, again, the improvements will only remain unique for a limited time by mutual agreement between importer and manufacturer. After that expires, the maker can put the same improvements onto every version going out the door.
I think the Americans commenting on Chris Schwartz's blog have a typically naive view of this. Firstly they don't understand the market. Those who can afford Veritas or LV, buy them. Many people, myself included, could never afford their prices, but I'm in a much bigger market segment than those who can.
Sure, I appreciate the quality of those products, but that's what makes them expensive. But there are probably a hundred people like me for every one LV or Veritas customer (and it'll be 1000:1 for Bridge City!).
So you drive the cost down by dropping the finishing operations and reduce the QC a bit, and probably use cheaper steel. Now I can afford it, and you get my money!
In short, there's room for both products. Quangsheng (sp?) isn't going to be the reason Clifton go out of business, and I very much hope they don't. They're serving different customers, or they should be. If Clifton go under, it'll be because people won't pay the difference. The extra cost of making a Clifton will be more than the market will stand. But even that's not the true story...
... the real issue is that our economy, the way businesses have to run, will have made Clifton uncompetitive. We don't want to give up our socialism, but it has to be paid for, and it's those costs -- business rates, employment laws, environmental laws, taxes of various sorts, pensions and so on -- that manufacturing here has to contend with. Some businesses are so profitable that they can pay those bills anyway, or do some international accounting tax dodge so they don't have to.
Small to mid-size manufacturing isn't that shape of business, sadly. It's a political decision as to whether we accept this as a reasonable price for our welfare state and huge state bureaucracy, or we do something about it at the ballot box.
By the way, I'm not putting forward an opinion here about whether the Chinese are right and we're wrong or vice versa. I'm just saying why it's far harder to be Clifton than Quangsheng. It's a political decision as to where the line in the sand goes.
E.
