Regarding clones/copies/other "trash"...
That's the problem, there is no way to know for sure.if you are going to be spending money, isn't your peace of mind worth the few extra $?
If someone is willing to steal a design, lock, idea or otherwise from another, what makes yu think they would be honest with you?
I make money honestly and I want to support honest knife makers and companies alike. Regardless of country of origin.
I agree with you in principle but in real life most things are stolen and directly copied or stolen and then slightly modified.
Don't look at the patents for KAI if someone stealing things gets your blood boiling. They've taken designs and features that someone else created and just because the other person didn't immediately patent the idea KAI did. Several times. Same with benchmade. I can't find the same issues with Spyderco. As a matter if fact, Spyderco is the only big knife company I can think of that either comes up with their own ideas or is completely up front and honest about giving credit to the creator of the design/feature. They won't even add a frame lock to a knife without saying Reeve Integral Lock (instead of changing the name to distance the actual creator) or put a liner lock in without saying the name Walker.
It's too early to go digging through patents but all you need to do is search on Google for KAI patents or whatever you need to do to verify for yourself. But several times they've either directly ripped off a designer or ripped it off and modified it just enough to claim as their own. Yet I'll still buy another ZT if I like the knife. I'd also buy a Kevin John knife if the quality and price beat the original. But not if the item was a true counterfeit rather than an obvious generic. That crosses the line both morally and legally. Anything else is just business and finding a company that doesn't do it at all is hard, and that's in any type of product you can think of. Almost all product manufacturing is, for the most part, is taking something that already exists and modifying it to make it better or manufacturing it at a cheaper cost. That's life and something not really worth getting upset about.
coun·ter·feit
ˈkoun(t)ərˌfit/
adjective
1.
made in exact imitation of something valuable or important with the intention to deceive or defraud.
The knives in the OP meet this definition.
But regarding your statement, what would you think of a high quality direct copy, not counterfeit, made by a company with outstanding customer and warranty service who backs their products up without question? Would it still be bad? No, not for most people. So the issue isn't with the copying, per se, it's with the companies being shady and not standing behind their product. That's why KAI is doing so well. Because their customer and warranty service is so good. If they failed in those two areas people would have already looked into and found out for themselves the negative aspects of the company and spoken about them at length. Instead they're just happy to have a quality product with an outstanding warranty at a decent price and the dark side of the business isn't an issue. That's life. And it's most definitely business.
If KAI was honest they'd call the sub-frame lock a Reeve Integral Lock with material covering a portion of a large lock bar cutout. But instead they patented it as a completely new concept. And that's just one thing, and a small one at that.
