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yes, that's true, I think that siamese 3x3x3 and Fisher cube should be not in cat.1, they should be free...because they are very common puzzles.....

i made and sold a fisher cube and a mental block. sorry tony, i didn't even consider you in my thoughts. i'd take them back if i could.

WRT the 3x3x3 Siamese cubes, does this refer to all of the connection types, or just the 1x1x3 connection?

This will probably be my only response since it has already been done to death in a previous thread.
Most of the questions are already answered in my first post.
Please remember we are not talking about rules or laws. I simply want to make my opinion clear to all those people who are thinking of asking my permission to copy. If there was a way to make this thread only readable to them I would. In future I can simply direct them here. It's not a case of what puzzle should or shouldn't be in a particular category. It's merely how I feel about certain creations. None of it is black and white but the Siamese Cubes and Fisher Cube are most definitely category one puzzles since at the time I was almost certainly the only one making things like this. This to me makes their designs (as transformations) exclusively mine. If I had made the decision to never again make certain puzzles then it might be a bit harsh to say no one else can. However, virtually all my creations are still "active". That includes my Fisher Cube.
A lot of my announcement also has to do with the future. What position will we be in five years time? There is an ever increasing amount of puzzle builders and it will continue to grow. Who's going to buy my Cube Day puzzles when a few weeks after they'll be cheap knockoffs available? This will mean a return to my regular job and a substantial reduction in my puzzle making. Sell them cheaper you might suggest. If I sell them cheaper I can't do it as a job. If I can't do it as a job I wont have anywhere near the time to make them.
I am still surprised at the response to my request. I personally could not sleep at night if I was selling knock off Master Pyraminxes, Kite Cubes, Helicopter Cubes etc etc. Finally, If it was any other product people wouldn't expect to be able to copy them. They might secretly but they certainly wouldn't approach the manufacturer expecting to be allowed to.

You're surprised at what is not entirely true. For instance, in the example of Master Pyraminx the mechanism is covered by patents that are expired at this time. Anyone can make them. The gore details lie in how they're made, and that is beyond the capabilities of most but just a few.

As you know, the patent system is designed to promote innovation by giving the inventor protection for certain number of years (provided the regular payments due are kept up with) in exchange for opening the invention to the public. After that the invention is free to anyone.

Even though as you're saying all your puzzles are still active, I (and some others) don't understand why the very old puzzles are asked to not be made. This is simply not what is usual and fair in the modern society with the patent system. You might think of many of us as ungrateful bastards (sorry for the strong word), but this kind of claim simply goes against reality. Even if you're not talking about the rules and laws, people still look at this in terms of what is customary and reasonable.

Hopefully no hard feelings. We're speaking our mind here and share opinions.

I sure wouldn't want to be know as the one that put Tony out of business because of cheap, low quality knock off's. Many people can make a puzzle, but few can design and produce an incredible piece of work such as the Golden Cube, or the Master Pyrminx (not Tony's). I would rather see people come up with poor quality original designs than try and sell a poor quality remake of an original design. Make one for yourself, but don't try and sell it for a profit.

Thanks Mr. Twisty, those words inspired me to reconsider it from Tony's view (or at least, my interpretation of his view).

If I were a dedicated artist/inventor/craftsman who spent a significant amount of time building such puzzles, the knockoffs would seem threatening. It's not pride or intellectual-property, it's just a sense of insecurity. What if the next batch of painstakingly crafted puzzles doesn't fetch a good enough price to support the hobby? (Shudder!)

If it was me I would certainly request fellow puzzle builders not to sell or trade them, especially the most precious ones. Like Tony did. Not for legal reasons, but to fend off that nagging sense of fear. (Please.)

I can't say for everyone but it would be a lie that I would not buy a puzzle invented by Tony Fisher if it was made by someone else, had a very good quality, and the pricing was reasonable. I would happily buy it. As large as my collection is it's missing all but two Tony Fisher's puzzles, one of which was made buy someone else.

I have a feeling that this might be about old ways vs new ways of doing things. In that view I sincerely hope that this discussion will possibly make Tony think of changing his ways in attempt to develop and make puzzles in less time. Be that CAD modeling or something else, it does not matter as long as he spends less time while producing the same in terms of quality, quantity, creativity, and inventiveness. And that, in turn, to the benefit of everyone else, might make Tony change his position somewhat on this issue as he would depend less on the income paying for all that time spent making puzzles.

Aleksey's comment reminds me of the issue in American Baseball. The integrity of the game.


Say, Roger Maris had the homerun record @ 61 for many many years. Then here comes along two 'juiced' up players - all of a sudden demolish that record by 10 HR!. How would you think Roger would feel if he saw this?


Yes, it did happen. Yes, there's not much you can do about it. Yes, it's still on the record, history has been broken. But damn, I can think he'd be rolling in his grave over this.

Think how Tony feels? All he's asking is for his consideration. I don't want to see his work go down the dumps because of this.

I admit, it is a nice example.

Also, I find it flattering for this forum that there exist people who would depend on our respect (e.g. Tony and his copyright wish), as well as many others (members of this forum), that would actually respect this wish.

Sadly though, this world is not made of sugar and honey. Some people will always breach wishes, and will even find ways to exploit everything to full extend. This is why it is advisable to patent a design.

From my experience, yes, it costs, and although becoming broke (lawyers, prototypes etc) is a certainty, it will force those who don't respect wishes to give up and respect those wishes. Plus, having a patent under your name is cool and it always decorates even the best of CVs.

And this is when wishes always come true!





Pantazis

First of all I sincerely hope that we're having a sensible and polite discussion that does not force anyone to take sides or turn against each other.

You make it sound like it's in black or white. But it isn't. It's not either he is making puzzles or not. It's about how much he can do. He was doing that for many many years before he found found himself on eBay and then found himself a market of a handful of people where he can command the highest price. So there is a lot of gray area here. Also, in case you didn't quite notice the main topic of this discussion went around only a few puzzles that Tony is asking not to make for profit.

Nobody's work's going down the dump as you put it. I find it a little, well, heated to say a thing like that, sorry. As well as misleading. Tony's work is very well appreciated and well received, and the work of other ingenious puzzle makers here is applauded and respected all the same.

I view of some heat accumulating here I guess I need to stop posting in this thread.

I do also feel there is no sides here, and what I'm asking has nothing to do with the issue, but do you think the puzzles Tony stated are only a few? Some of them like: "Siamese 3x3 cubes" this is not only 1 puzzle but a whole lot...
He stated 35 things (not the cubie chaos 1 and 2) which include more of them, personaly I don't think this is 'only a few'
nothing personal again, just interpretation of things..

edit: 35-8=27 cause the ones in category 3 are ok sorry(!)

Maybe that was too extreme of a word? I'm a huge fan of Tony's puzzles (If you haven't guessed I do have many of them already).

I was merely saying that, if people continue to mock off his puzzles and people are buying them instead of his real ones... it would probably give Tony less motivation to make newer puzzles and/or make his old puzzles again.

I know I would stop.

This is a hobby to him, yet it also provides income for him. He has no obligation to anyone to do any of this. He's not a business or corporation. I just don't want any of this to push him away - or any other puzzle builder.

He goes into a lot of detail and work to make this gems. He spent many years perfecting his work. Wouldn't you too feel disgusted to get pushed aside by a lesser quality knock off?

Yeah I know, nothing is black and white, there's tons of gray areas. But I stand by what I say, and I do support Tony 100%. I have spent many dollars on his puzzles - because they are artwork to me. Nor do I regret it, every cent was worth it.


note - I'm sure he won't mind if you make one for yourself, for you to enjoy. It's the whole concept of making money off of his work. Building his puzzles with the incentive to make money and not give him his credit. We are a small community and know the difference between a real Tony Fisher puzzle and a knock off.

Erik, if you read it over again, you will see that I was never talking about the whole list, but rather about a couple of puzzles. So yes, it is just a few.

People who buy "knock offs" and people who buy Tony Fisher's originals are different people. These do no intersect. It's hard to believe you don't see that. There is plenty of examples to that in the other areas of the real world as well. As an experiment, it would be interesting to see how many different people had bought Tony's puzzles on eBay since he had been there to see the real market.


Why a copy must be of a lesser quality? Don't you think it could be of the same or even better quality, say, if modeled in CAD and printed?


Exactly. And so I am yet to see a copy of his puzzle where the credit is not given to Tony that he invented it. Moreover, you simply can't hide a thing like that. If you do you become an outcast.

I'm sorry... where is this going? lol. I don't understand why I'm debating here. All I'm saying is that I support Tony what he's saying.

---
on a side note - There are people who believe in Piracy and those who do not. Think about that...

I am going to give you, I think, the shortest reply of mine on this forum: Yep!


And there are people who know that there is no such thing as black and white. Sorry.

Eh, did I miss something? I read it a couple of times and was pretty sure you were talking about the whole list, well sorry anyway

Erik, this discussion has actually taken two different paths. One of them is around general philosophy that has already been discussed in an old topic but here it is again as, I think, every controversial topic. And the other is whether some puzzles belong to the list or not. In the latter case I stated that I believed that some puzzles don't belong to where they were, and they were just a couple. Hope this is clearer now. Sorry about all the confusion.

It could also be viewed as a good opportunity for innovation.

If Tony has asked for this, it doesn't kill anyone to comply.

Although "the world doesn't work that way", it doesn't give anyone an excuse to follow suit with the world.

Certainly not here. This is a good community. Might be time for us to hit the books again and come up with our own designs and ideas.

Remember noone has made the isododecahedron, and there are plenty of other deep cut puzzles no one has made. All the shape 3x3x3 variations haven't been explored.

I believe this thread (as well as the previous one) brought up a lot of good and interesting points to consider. While I have an opinion that is different from Tony, and even though I was trying to urge him (and other puzzle designers for that matter) to be more liberal about this, it would be a mistake to think that I want to or will go against his wishes. Thanks, everyone.

There are people in the real world (opposed to the twistypuzzles world) that don't care a straw about this discussion.
For another 6 days 21 hours there is a Fisher Cube auctioned at Ebay, but without telling that it is a Fisher Cube of course.

Yes, there are many who don't care, unfortunately.

But there are also many people who don't know about this issue and they just encounter some interesting and colorful 3x3x3 variation on ebay. Anyone of those would be tempted to get it.

On the other hand, patenting a series of designs could cost a fortune.

Like we say in Greece "in front there is a cliff and on the back there is a (river) stream"...





Pantazis

Georges, The seller of that puzzle is Greg Stevens. He has been making mods since early eighties and as far as I remember he is mentioned in the 1st edition of "Creative Puzzles of the World". I don't have the book on hand to verify though.

I haven't heard people on here say anything good about him though.

Check the quality of http://www.helm.lu/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=1254 , it doesn't look too great.

I know Aleksey, I didn't want to post his name here. I saw his name first in June 1988 in the cube-lovers from MIT. His modding skills have unfortunately not become better with time.
The mods I have from him look like they were made in a hurry and the pics he posts when selling them seem always somewhat blurred, so you can't discern the defects.

Two examples (pics by myself)
http://www.helm.lu/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=1254
http://www.helm.lu/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=782

But he seems to have produced cubes that were not produced by others.

One example of his :

joey, you beat me by several minutes!

Much arguing on both sides, I'm not even going to bother stating my position on this one.

However, I do have one question:

If anyone else made the same request, would the members of this forum get as riled up? I'm pretty sure the answer is no, so the real thing I'm wondering is, why not?

Well, I would state my position all the same. Now, the mere fact that we can have this kind of discussion without turning on each other is one of things I like here.

I agree on that, I'm not very long on this forum so far but I've seen some heated discussions which turned personal and stuff, it's great that didn't happen (yet)

Hidetoshi and Katsuhiko have both expressed this before...

Tony in turn has also respected this as you can see that neither have copied each other's work.

Fair enough, but I think you're missing the point I was getting at. Basically, what I am saying is that Tony has basically attempted to circumvent patent by politely requesting not to be imitated *for commercial gain*. What I find a bit strange is that he has not declared copyright on his designs, which would offer some legal protection, and costs zero. Regardless, he's perfectly entitled to make such a request, and I'm not going to offer my opinion of the correctness of such a request--I'M STAYING OUT OF IT!

What I am wondering, though, is that there are a number of people giving him props for this move--fine. What I am not seeing is an equally vocal support of such a level of implied protection for *all* modifications.

The reason I am pointing this out is that the support strikes me as a little less than genuine, for if it were, the price of mods on ebay should also drop like a stone for all but a few items--simply out of distain for selling designs that are not original--and I'm not seeing this happen.

Thus, what I am asking is why only one--or a select few--individuals should have this type of protection?

Hence why I'm staying out of this one, because offering an opinion on this could easily be taken as my opinion of Tony Fisher personally, and I have never met / spoken to / dealt with him in any way, and honestly don't have an opinion (other than that he has certainly come up with a few cool designs).

Just my two cents.

Cheers!

No no no, this is so wrong. You obviously haven't checked the procedures, the time it takes, and the costs. An international patent (or even a domestic patent) for one item can be extremely expensive. Now, if you have many items, it will cost you a fortune.

Zero? I don't think so. And how do I know? I have been filing one patent this month!




Pantazis

I know, patenting is stupid expensive! I'm talking about *copyright*! It's a very different thing. Heck, I've published heaps of stuff, and just stuck copyright (me) on all of it, and it's binding. But it's not a patent!

ooops, you are right, I might be filing a patent, but I haven't checked copyrights yet.

Sorry for this, I tend to mix those things up! (it's almost like a mental block)
But after such a pie on my face, I promise I won't mix them any more LOL





Pantazis

Also there are design patents. If I am not mistaken the Rubik's cube is covered by definition of of the color scheme, as the patent has long expired. But yes, I'd love to understand if puzzles can be covered by copyright. So far they're covered by patents and I suspect that is for a reason.

My very fuzzy recollection of the matter is that copyright is related more specifically to text or images. This is why when a band covers a song written by someone else, they are not infringing but do need to purchase the sheet music.
I don't think a copyright applies to a mechanical device, as it is non-trivial to "copy" as opposed to text or images which are. Perhaps there is a distinction between art vs. a device. I'll try to get more info. Any lawyers in our group to help?

Dave

I've prosecuted patents (but not "design patents") both with an attorney and by myself, and also been involved in copyright litigation. The oversimplified difference is that patents cover something you can "teach", such as the expertise to build a new device or method to carry out a particular process. Copyrights cover any original product of "mental labor." There can be overlap because copyright can cover just about anything. But copyrights don't prohibit imitation, and they don't protect the bare essence.

So relative to this discussion (and I think we've moved onto a different topic) copyrights can't be relied upon for protection of a puzzle. If it embodies considerably novel details and the infringer literally copies those details, you (or your attorney) might argue a strong case.

Keep in mind that copyright is implicit. You don't have to put "Copyright (me)" on it and you are still protected. But adding this it makes much more clear and reduces the chance there might be some dispute as to original ownership.

Dave

Wasn't Jürgen Brandt the first to make a Icosahedron Megaminx?

Yes, but he frequently encourages people to recreate his mods.

I don't want to be a jerk for bringing it up, but there is an obvious double standard here.

Will this never end?
Joe,
Master Pyraminxes, Kite Cubes, Helicopter Cubes are all puzzles sold by the people who made them. Copying them for profit is clearly wrong without Katsuhiko's, Aleh's or Adam's permission. I have Jurgens permission to make Icosahedron Megaminxes as does everyone else. Is it so so dificult to understand the difference between what's right and proper and what's not??

Apparently so, other designers have no problem with granting permission for others to build remakes. Myself and others are interested in building some of the simple mods, that you are not still producing. This allows the modders to get their feet wet, and in order not to lose their shirt in the process. We aren’t looking to replicate those puzzles you’re still producing.

Are Jurgen's puzzles open source now since the DVD? I've made and sold copies of his puzzles, but not to try to rip him off. His puzzles are great and totally unavailable.

I would never try to anger someone in this way. I totally understand why Tony feels this way and I think the right thing to do is respect his request.

-mg

Sorry to bump this old thread but I don't understand something.

The category 1, we can't sell them.
The 3, we can.

But the 2? Can we sell them?

What Tony means is that he doesn't want them being sold, but this area is of more arguable puzzles.

I don't think that the Siamese cube should be restricted here. Meffert even sells them.

If you had read it properly you wouldn't have started up the merry-go-round yet again!



It's nothing to do with what you think, it's merely my polite request, It's not an instruction, order, law etc etc. Everyone has the right to ignore it if they wish.

I'm sorry if I'm further bumping this thread, but I noticed that "TRUNCATED CUBOCTAHEDRON" is in the first category, and I had no idea until now! I'd like to apologize for selling mine, Tony; I had no clue! I respect your request and would have followed it had I known. I can't find it (the cuboctahedron) in the forum though, could someone link me to it please?