Benchmade Boycott?

update: looks like JB has decided not to make it right, so he's off my list of viable options. I'll clean up the knife and maybe offer it for sale at a later date. (The knife is not for sale at this time)

Anyone looking for objective feedback would do well to consider this transaction. This is about as objective as it gets. I f you do business with him and get burned, don't try to tell anyone you didn't expect it.
 
just got across this discussion about this Balisong Patent of Benchmade and the raucus it has created with parts of the knife industry. I'm a Filipino and a knife lover and I did react for the reason that there is indeed an injustice done by BM to knife lovers, sellers, makers and designers and to the original balisong knife from Barrio Balisong in Batangas, Philippines. BM makes some of the best production knives out there and I don't subscribe to the deception that BM makes crappy products. Yet i believe that BM wrongfully patented the Balisong name by tweaking it a bit (Bali-song), yet you dont pronounce it as bali-dash-song you pronouce it as balisong. The balisong knife also know as Batangas knife and Beinte-Nueve (29), Paypay (filipino for fan) or fan knife is a very basic Filipino pocket knife, I had a teasured one when I was a kid. This was part of the indo-malayan peninsula culture where the karambit was part of as an agricultural tool that evolved into a weapon. Now why would a decent knife company like BM patent a generic name such that they can go after any knife-maker or custom maker that makes a reference to "balisong". It is plainly wrong. This is one of the few instances that the line drawing design and concept is almost non-existent. You can patent design, but not concepts. BM has patented a concept. The concept of the Balisong is the design itself. Imagine the word Karambit being patented. These kinds of corporate mistakes takes a lot from us knife lovers and the people in the knife industry where we derive all this joy and appreciation of the knife. It limits creativity, and limits business opportunity. I love BM products but I think they got it wrong here. I won't boycott BM but I sure will try to persuade them in every other way to have them withdraw or have their patent withdrawn.
 
I really dislike this but:
The theme of the post is ancient news, buried long ago in the fields of "no one cares". It still sits there in "no one cares" to this very day. I'm fairly certain that anyone that is interested in "balisong" style knives has the common sense to know how to pronounce the name and possibly read a little on the history of where they came from. I for one, am very interested in learning about cultures (anthropology is cool) - this however, crosses the border into just plain ssenseless. Wrong or right, you cannot change the past and it is what it is.
 
The guy is completely off his rocker. Practically everything he says in his videos is either completely incorrect, half correct, misinterpreted, or misrepresented, and full of shit. His Benchmite video for example. He claims that BM sold an illegally imported automatic version of the Benchmite made in Taiwan. The only automatic Benchmite was the 3100, and it was made in the USA. The Taiwanese made Red Class Benchmites were never available as an automatic. His beef stems from BM's lawsuit against him for selling an imported Benchmite auto clone. His videos neglect to mention that these knives were also called Benchmites and packaged in a box that suggested that they were made in the USA. There's plenty of other Benchmite auto clones, but at least they weren't stupid enough to call them "Benchmites".

Note that a large amount of RSI's offerings are in fact illegally imported automatics and balisongs.

http://www.blademag.com/profiles/blogs/court-rules-in-favor-of
 
Thanks, for the link, Planterz! Selling knockoffs that look sorta like the product in question is one thing (and subject to intense debates and poo-fests of its own), but to counterfeit an item - right down to its name - is plain fraud and as scumbaggy as you can get without physically assaulting someone.
 
Benchmade does not have a registered trademark on balisong. They absolutely do have a registered trademark on Bali-Song(tm) with the distinctive hyphen. This is a prefectly legitimate trademark.
 
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