selling replica items ... marked replica

[jacko]

would you consider this a sin?

 

[Gideon300]

would you consider this a sin?

No, unless it goes against copyright law.

 

[jacko]

copy of xyz brand name knife... not trying to trick the consumer at all.

 

[HealthAndHappiness]

copy of xyz brand name knife... not trying to trick the consumer at all.

I'm not sure what you are asking.
Can you give another example?
I am familiar with the Chinese practice of using their population to copy everything and selling it back to America and other parts of the world. This undercuts the price of the original manufacturer. I have never heard of a knife that has been branded and says it's a replica. There are cheap replica wall hanger swords and fantasy knives. Those are usually not seen as the genuine article when purchased, but cheap knock offs.

 

[Gideon300]

copy of xyz brand name knife... not trying to trick the consumer at all.

That's not the point. It's probably OK. How do you copyright a knife design? But you don't want to find yourself in court or with a product that you can't sell. Or both.

 

[HealthAndHappiness]

That's not the point. It's probably OK. How do you copyright a knife design? But you don't want to find yourself in court or with a product that you can't sell. Or both.

In America there's a patent office that supposed to protect special designs.
ChiComs use it as a data base to manufacture the designs cheaper using slave labor.

 

[seoulsearch]

would you consider this a sin?

copy of xyz brand name knife... not trying to trick the consumer at all.

I don't know if God will tell you directly, "Yes, this is ok," or "No, don't do this," but He might, so I would definitely pray about it first.

The moral issue for me would be, "Who is deserving the credit/profit from the design, and am I stealing from the original designers by selling copies, even if everyone knows they are copies?"

I know that nothing is new and most everything in some way is a copy of something else. But I actually struggle with this myself.

I love T-shirts with a variety of characters (Transformers, 80's cartoons, Super Mario Bros., etc.) but the best ones I find are always on internet stores in which artists are either blatantly stealing the designs or refashioning them from large companies without permission to make their own profits. I always ask myself, "As a Christian, should I buy them?"

The thing is, a lot of people don't mind if it's the little guy making a profit off a huge corporation that has enough money to legally defend itself.

But the problem is that now a lot of large corporations are copying designs from online creators, making them in mass production, and reeling in the profits -- when obviously, the individual creators don't have the means to fight back. (I watch some artist's channels on YouTube who openly talk about this problem when putting your designs online.)

So it becomes a matter of, "Who is allowed to copy whom, and when does it become a legal issue?" Is it somehow right if someone little is making money off someone bigger?

One thing you might want to ask yourself is, "If someone copied MY copy and made a profit off of it, how would I feel? Would I be ok with someone making money off of my own copy? And what do I believe God would say about it?"

 

[Gideon300]

In America there's a patent office that supposed to protect special designs.
ChiComs use it as a data base to manufacture the designs cheaper using slave labor.

True. Some inventors refuse to patent their products for that reason.

 

[jacko]

copy of logo too.. basically, I know it's not the right things to do.. There is just a big demand in the market place and again not trying to hustle anyone but probably the OEM would have problems with it. So it's a pass on the opportunity as a side hustle.