Here is a lawsuit CASE XX filed for doing custom scrimshaw on their knives.

[Andrew Biggs]

Hi Mr

It all strikes me as rather silly.

However you are doing the right thing. Find other knives to scrim and move on. Life's to short to get caught up in this sort of thing. If your overall happy with e-bay then stick with it.

And yes, there are lawyers that troll through the net looking for this sort of thing and then billing the company for protecting them. Give the lawyers a break, they have to make a living just like the rest of us. If an international pandemic of common sense broke out then there would be no need for lawyers, bureaucrats, politicians, protestors, trendy lefties, tree huggers, radical right wingers, police, armies and all the rest of it. We would never drink to excess, eat fatty foods, smoke cigarettes or illicit substances, fight, covet our neighbours wife, etc etc etc............in fact there would be nothing left to complain about

Cheers
Andrew

 

[Mike Cirelli]

They must have another statement if it pertains to Case, because that statement says nothing about Case. It doesn't say anything like Zippo and it subsidiaries.

 

[MrMister]

Hi, Mike. Well my Case XX scrimshawed knives were pulled from ebay and they gave me contact info to get in touch with those who pulled it. Well zippo.com was the ones and I got the email for their lawyer, but after multiple emails all I heard was crickets. lol I was wondering why in teh world at first zippo contacted me, but after research, they own Case brand knives. Hi, Andrew, yes it is silly and I agree, best to just not scrim their knives anymore. I don't like companies that do things that way. Would be like Chevy saying you can't resell your car if you have it custom painted. I am overall happy with ebay, just don't like some of the strange things they do at times and I just want to be for sure any other knife brands I scrim and sell there I don't have this same problem.

 

[DakotaDocMartin]

The only thing I like about ebay is the huge, world-wide market and I don't think any other place selling on the internet comes close.

They are the biggest alright. But, almost anything you can think of is on there. Gunbroker is more concentrated on guns, knives, etc. and draws those buyers and sellers in particular. You may be surprised. They originally started up due to eBay restrictions.

 

[MrMister]

Thank-you, Doc. I checked the website out and will look more into it. Worth seeing what it's about and like you said, I might be surprised. I wouldn't miss ebay at all if I had a better way to sell my scrimshaw knives.

 

[Dulltool]

I was toying with the idea of changing the color of my motorcycle.... Will I be placed in Irons?... Should I get permission from Yamaha first?

Case Company is sounding like a little spoiled brat.

 

[Marcus Hunt]

Ooookaaayyy, I think I know where Zippo are coming from and I don't think they are coming after the likes of you and me for our unique engravings. Indeed, take a look at "engraved zippo" on evilBay and you'll see a myriad of offerings which I don't think Zippo would have the time or energy to waste chasing and threatening people.

However, did anyone bother to go that one stage further and read more than the posted link about auction sites? If you look here http://www.zippo.com/terms.aspx and go to "product customisation" you may start to see where they're coming from. I read it as they don't want guys buying up a load of their lighters and sticking licensed logos or copyrighted artwork on their lighters. This equates to covering their own ass from angry copyright lawyers, from the likes of the Rolling Stones or Eagles or even Harley Davidson for example, chasing Zippo for manufacturing unlicensed products when in fact it was the person who bought the Zippo who customised it and infringed the copyright. There are literally millions of Zippos out there with licensed artwork on them.

If the likes of GRS or Lindsay wanted a lighter with their logo on it Zippo wouldn't have a problem but they might if GRS wanted to use Lindsay's logo or vice versa or indeed if anyone else started producing GRS/Lindsay artwork on the lighters and selling them as "official products". Think about it, who are GRS' lawyers going to go after the little guy selling in the auction or Zippo? Zippo of course unless they can show that they've taken reasonable steps to ensure that they will not tolerate copyright infringement of artwork which they have.

Now regarding Case, I am sure that somewhere along the line the ad must've flagged up warnings that it looked like Case produced the custom knife when it hadn't. They obviously want to set an example and unfortunately you must have made it sound like this was an original by Case rather than an aftermarket customisation and now you are on some sort of blacklist it seems.

Again, in the world of knife making there must be millions of factory knives that have been engraved or scrimmed in the aftermarket so if they took you to court I doubt they'd win on that alone. The reference to the collector club means that if the knife you scrimshawed was perceived by a customer as a one off, factory custom, sanctioned by Case they might feel it is worth more because it's an "official product" than if it was an aftermarket customisation - stupid I know, but that's how a lot of collectors think.

I've engraved load's of Spyderco's and never had a problem either selling on eBay or as a commission. Indeed, a couple have even been posted by their owner on the official Spyderco forum that Sal Glesser (owner of Spyderco) frequents and there has been no adverse reaction. I don't know about recently but in their adverts they used to promote their stainless models as being suitable for engraving so this can only be seen as encouragement unlike Case's viewpoint on the subject. There are all sorts of Spyderco customisations (other than engraving) and Spyderco seem quite happy with that.

 

[SamW]

Marcus, you make sense! You too Andrew!

 

[MrMister]

Hi, all. There are valid points being made. I'm done with case knives anyway, but here is a quote from a letter the lawyer wrote that someone posted online. The same one I was given contact info for back but never heard from. This is what the lawyer said, "Unauthorized alterations to genuine ZIPPO brand lighters and all other Zippo Manufacturing Company (Zippo) products by, among other things, the
application of artwork or emblems constitutes a serious violation of the legal rights of Zippo, which it is entitled to enforce in the courts. Although some of these alterations may be tastefully done, many that we have seen are not and, regardless of the quality of the alterations, sale of the
altered product under the ZIPPO name is an infringement of Zippo's trademarks. The ZIPPOâ trademark is registered on the Principal Register in the United States and in the vast majority of foreign countries.

Many laws protect Zippo's rights including, but not limited to, the Federal Lanham Act which protects against false designation of origin and misleading descriptions or representations of fact which are likely to cause confusion
concerning the connection or origin or sponsorship of certain goods and services. Zippo will be damaged by the sale, under the ZIPPOâ name, of lighters and all other Zippo products that have been subject to unauthorized
alterations." I'll leave it up to everyone to decipher her thoughts, but for me seems clear she is totally against any alterations to their products. Actually, I think she is more like the legal secretary that does all the writing and things like this for the main lawyer, which is basically the thoughts of that lawyer through her.

 

[j.c.]

Take out the wording “New in the boxâ€￾ …it isn’t.

Add in giant red letters :

“NOT AFFILIATED WITH CASE KNIVES OR ITS SUBSIDIAREIESâ€￾

If that does not solve your problem, as stated here by others, go elsewhere than fleabay.

If you remain adamant about selling on that venue, get a lawyer to write a letter to their lawyer and let the fun begin.

j.c.

 

[MrMister]

Hi, J.C.. Thanks for the advice. I've just decided it's not worth the hassle and I'm not going to scrim or buy case again. Just going to support other knife brands from now on.

 

[Mike Fennell]

As Sam Welch says, Marcus and Andrew make sense.

Any owner of a trademark has a couple of issues to attend to. First, you do not want to lose your trademark by allowing it to adopted into the public-domain. This happened to Saran Wrap. Xerox spent a lot of money to prevent this when copy machines became generally available and office personnel began saying "xerox this" rather than "photocopy this" .

Also, as the owner of the intellectual property embodied in the item, you have a moral right to prevent your design from being distorted or perverted in an unbecoming manner. In case of blatant violation, if you fail to promptly enforce your rights, you may lose the right to enforce them. This is called laches.

There is also the issue of the over-zealous employee who makes a mountain out of a molehill, and the overworked customer service department that fails to respond because they are busy with other matters. This may be what happened with Zippo here.

 

[Hot Knobs]

It seams Spiderco is not concerned with people enhancing there knives, this guy has been doing it a long time, as well as other brands, he has a web site for all to see. www. windyridgedesigns.com

 

[MrMister]

Thanks, Hot Knobs, sounds like Spiderco is a great company to deal with. I just made another seperate post not long ago that Schrade said it's okay too. Makes me very very happy to deal with a company that has common sense and doesn't ignore your emails or think they are above the law. Companies like that is where my total support will be from now on.

 

[BrianPowley]

Well over 10 years ago, I tried to get in with Zippo---engraved a lighter and gave it to them. The gal in the art department thought it was nice and showed it to her boss.
She called me back and asked if I wanted the lighter back, because they weren't interested. I suggested that they were more than welcome to put the lighter in their "Museum" as a gift from me.
The lady told me, "Mr. Powley, my boss told me to throw it away or destroy it. I'm offering to send it back to you. The choice is yours."
I got it back and will never deal with that American company again. No Zippos or Case knifes for me.

 

[MrMister]

Wow, Brian. That's some experience you had and for them to do that shows what a horrible company they are to deal with. They didn't have to say that about the boss wanting to throw it away or destroy it, when you were GIVING it to them out of the goodness of your heart. Well you know it's good to hear from someone with another bad experience and thank-you for sharing. I was buying 4-5 case knives a week to scrim on, but never again will I buy another of their products. I have four I'm packaging up and gonna return tomorrow for a refund I bought from a dealer. What really got me is how totally opposite Schrade was when I asked them about doing custom scrimshaw on knives and how quick the top person was to respond to me(and postively about it, he had zero problem with it) and even after five emails to zippo's legal secretary(whom ebay gave me their email to contact them for any questions or explanations, since they were the ones that had my knives removed) and one to the main president of case from nearly a week ago, I still am yet to hear a reply or explanation. They'll never get another dollar off of me and where I'm in contact with a lot of knife collectors, I'm gonna spread the word. Maybe in the future if I get good enough I can do custom knives for one of their competitors to mass produce and stick it to them!(Pardon the knife pun with the stick it part.lol)

 

[DakotaDocMartin]

Yep. If that's the way they are... I don't need any Case knives or Zippo lighters either.

 

[Brian Marshall]

Got two Schrades coming up in the middle of the week...


Brian

 

[yxrancher]

Just when I thought I was immune to all this silly worry about our freedom of expression - I get a letter from my Mother's attorney concerning my new tattoo!

 

[yxrancher]

Lord I apologize - there is nothing silly about Freedom!