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reswright
3850
Jun 24, 2019
Ganzo Clones So you might be thinking 'well if Ganzos are so good, what's the big deal, why do I hear other people complaining and knocking them? Well, it's mostly because they started making very good copies of Benchmades, Lionsteels, and other well known Western knives. VERY good ones. For $20. Were these true clones, i.e. meant to be mistaken for the originals at their point of sale, with fraudulent branding and packaging and so on? No, they better fit the description of something that are just different enough that a patent lawyer can say "look, this legally meets the definition of a different item' and have some fairly established precedents on their side. For starters, they're usually different sizes from the original -- something you can't often tell just by looking at the picture online. They also had different markings and less embellished detail, as you'd expect for the price difference. Two examples: : the F7562, next to the 940 Osborne.. Not fair I suppose to compare CF to G10 but the Osborne is almost half the weight of the Ganzo. It's grip is a hundred times more refined, the blade is a lot lighter, it's also S90V instead of 440C. They feel dramatically different in the hand. But it's still pretty obvious where Ganzo got the idea, isn't it?
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And the G712 next to the Benchmade 8600BK. In this case the Ganzo's smaller, about 3/4 the weight of the Bedlam, which is a chunk of a knife. The Benchmade also comes with a milled metal backspacer and reversible clip positions, and the Ganzo goes with metal standoffs, and one position for your clip. And the Bedlam's an auto and the Ganzo's a regular axis lock. There's many differences. Still, no one struggles to connect these two knives.
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So, there you are. Is it ok to buy Ganzo? Depends on who you ask. The reason so many people are torn by what is obviously a slam dunk IP infringement case, even though it's not legally counterfeiting or cloning, is that the Ganzos are really, seriously good knives. Not as good as the ones they rip off (that's probably a fair way to describe it) but crazy stupid good for their price. People love them. People like me say 'damn right, sell more of them. If our industries want us to go to bat for them they gotta get back to the practice of going to bat for the people who buy their stuff'. But it's quite possible to have another reasonable opinion about all this that goes completely the other way and say 'no this is wrong and we can't have it, intellectual property law is just too important'. Me, I think law serves the people and not the other way around but that's just my side, they deserve the chance to express theirs in their own words. I obviously lean one way on these. After all, I bought all these knives, didn't I? Benchmade has my money, and it's not like I woulda bought two copies of their knives if Ganzo didn't come along, really. Many people piss and moan about it but the truth is I struggle to feel sympathetic toward Benchmade and companies that only want to make expensive knives that most Americans can't afford, yet still want to have that 'Americana' identity about them. They're in a position to make and sell knives at the budget price point and employ more Americans and they don't do any of that, because they want to preserve the fat profit margin on their main lines of knives. It's perfectly legal, but don't come asking me to respect it. Ganzo picks that respect up for one big reason -- they're making good value knives available to people who deserve them and don't get them currently. Right now if you try to be a 'good' American and spend your money on 'American' value brands you get the shaft, and that shouldn't be the case. If you ask me, the shame's on our side that it takes a foreign firm to come give us this wake up call. The awesome deal represented by these knives is what's supposed to sit at the heart of the free market, and yet somehow, we're only getting this knife because a foreign country makes it. When you think about it, that's kinda messed up.
(Edited)
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