Knife Cloning, to what degree is a knife copy a copy

[Cyblade]

I've been meaning to bring this subject up before, at what point is a knife a ripoff ???? Ok I was just over at Newt Livesay's site and he says that the CRKT Stiff Kiss is a ripoff of his Woo knife, I have both and really I dont see it, the Woo is kinda short and fat where the Kiss is long and thin how they are alike other than being chisel ground tanto's I dont know. I know there are blatent ripoffs such as Master Cutlerys kerambit that is a direct copy down to the wave of Ernest Emersons kerambit :

Knockoff
Real Deal

see any diffrence whatsoever I'm surprised they didnt go ahead and slap the Emerson logo on the damn thing. But there are alot of knives that are inbetween where they have a general shape to them and they look sorta like a known design but you can tell the diffrence really easy. So where is the line drawn is it only with the extreme examples such as the Strider Tiger ripoff that bud k sales or is it basic designs that have been around for awhile but are used by a certain maker to the point that they are known for it, or is the answer somewhere in the middle.

 

[Walking Man]

That is a very difficult question to answer, and you will get as many answers as there are forum members........

 

[Roadrunner]

I draw the line when my first thought upon seeing a knife is "That looks just like 'X' knife that 'X company' makes". It's subjective, I know, but that's how I draw the line. If it's obvious to me that one new knife is trying to ride another's success wave rather than come up with something new or at least different, than I won't buy that knife or from that manufacturer. That's why I absolutely will not buy from S&W, aka Taylor Cutlery, becasue of myriad rip-offs they've done. They're well constructed for their price point, but CRKT is better and collaborates with knifemakers instead of ripping them off.

FWIW, I don't think the stiff kiss rips off the Woo. They have similar design philosophies, but they're not close enough to be considered a copy to me. Newt seems to be sensitive about that, he claimed the Ka-Bar Warthog was a rip-off of one of his designs and I didn't see that either. I say that with all respect to Newt, but I think he has a broad view of what constitutes a copy.