Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and there's a question that I get relatively frequently, which is usually ...
Let's just take say the 1905 Bjorgum pistol. There are none out there, it's an unusual gun,
it's interesting looking and someone will say well, why doesn't someone make it?
Who owns the copyright to this gun? And what would it take for someone to buy it and make the gun?
And I think this reflects a lack of understanding with some people of what is a copyright? What is a patent?
What did they do? What's the difference? And then also a question of, like, I want to make this gun,
... like here's the patent, it has all the drawings, why doesn't someone make it?
So I also want to talk about the difference between patent drawings and blueprints.
And who owns blueprints and where blueprints go, like, are they out there, are they not?
So, let's begin with the basics, which are copyright versus patent.
Both of these are legal concepts that were introduced as a way to encourage innovation and creativity.
The idea being if you go out on your own and take the risk, and create something
that is new and useful or desirable, you get a limited time monopoly on its sale.
So that's your reward for taking the risk of inventing it, or writing it, or composing it.
Both patents and copyrights are enunciated, or founded, in the United States Constitution,
although they of course exist virtually everywhere else in the world as well.
And the difference is: a copyright is on basically, originally a book. It was if you create a written work,
other people can't go out and just print their own copies of it and sell them without paying you,
or coming to some agreement with you.
So a copyright has since expanded to cover other forms of media,
but ... think of it as the creative media. So art, music, photography, writing, those things.
And the term of a copyright began as 14 years, plus an additional potential 14 year extension.
It has been sequentially extended over the last couple hundred years.
Today a copyright is valid for the lifetime of the author, plus an additional 70 years.
So that's a very long time.
Now, a patent, on the other hand, is the same sort of temporary legal monopoly,
but based on a mechanical construction, something that you can build and hold.
It is technology rather than artistic creativity.
So what's interesting about patents is they have not expanded in term in the way that copyrights have.
So a patent is still between 14 and 21 years.
It's a 14 year initial patent with a potential extension under some circumstances to 21 years.
That's how it was originally, and that's basically what it still is today, with a few minor tweaks.
So when we're talking about historical firearms, like a 1905 Bjorgum,
any patents that existed on that originally have long since disappeared, and once the patent expires,
anyone else can build that thing and sell it without having to give the original
inventor any royalty, or payment, or get their permission, or anything like that.
So when it comes to firearms designs,
it's only the most recent things that are actually under patent.
So from that perspective, if you want to go build a 1905 Bjorgum, you are more than welcome to.
In fact if you want to go build an HK P7, you are welcome to.
... The other thing to consider is patents are issued on specific mechanical features,
so if you look at, say, an HK P7, you go, ah well, the two major functions
of this are the squeeze cocking thing and the gas delay thing.
Well, the gas delay thing has been around for many decades before HK did it.
In fact, that system was originally patented by Ole Krag, in something like 1910.
So, even when HK made the P7 they couldn't patent that gas delay system because it
was what's called prior art. Someone has already done it, you can't patent it after that.
However, a lot of patents exist on relatively small features of a gun. So
they may prevent you from making an exact copy of something relatively new,
but they may not prevent you from making something very similar.
It all depends on exactly what features have been patented.
So, once you've got patents out of the way, the next question that people have is generally,
well where can I find the blueprints for this gun?
And again here I think we have a misunderstanding of exactly what blueprints are.
Because if you look up the patent for a gun, especially an older gun,
you will typically find this whole nice series of drawings, exploded views, sort of cutaway
mechanical drawings, showing exactly how everything works. And a lot of people seem to
have the impression that this tells you how to build the gun.
In reality, the information you get from patent drawings is simply
... it's, like, how does the gun work? Which is not the same as how do you make the gun?
So if you have a physical example of an item, you will have as much information,
in fact, you'll have quite a bit more information about it, than you would just looking at the patent drawings.
In addition, just because you send one set of design drawings in with a patent and you receive a patent,
that doesn't mean that the product you build under that patent has to look exactly the same.
There are a lot of instances where the patent for a gun doesn't look a whole lot like the final product.
The only thing that's legally relevant is that the specific features that you are patenting
are reproduced the same way in the device that you end up selling.
And if they're not, then you don't have a patent on whatever it is that you're actually selling.
So a good example of this would be John Browning. A lot of the patents that he took out, that he was awarded,
he would sell to Winchester. And Winchester would do a substantial amount of
tweaking and redesign to the guns that he created, to turn them into marketable products.
So they would make use of whatever his patented feature was, but looking at Browning's patent
doesn't ... Like, if you look at the patent behind an 1895 Winchester lever-action,
it doesn't quite look the same as an actual Winchester 1895 lever action, for that reason.
Now, what you would actually need if you want to just put a gun into production, like I want to build a copy of that,
of the 1905 Bjorgum. What you need is what today is called a technical data package for the gun.
Colloquially called "blueprints".
Those include a couple of pieces of information that are nowhere on patent drawings.
So, one thing is just measurements. Patent drawings don't have measurements.
They don't need them, like the scale of the thing really doesn't matter.
But it's not just like a length, like the slide is four inches long.
It's much more than just that. You also need to know like, OK,
it's four inches plus or minus what? Every part has to fit together and work correctly,
which means every part has a range of dimensions that it can be.
Manufacturing is not an exact science, and any manufacturing process will create a range of sizes,
no matter how good you make it. The more money, and the more time, and the more care you spend,
the tighter you can make that range of variation, but you'll never get rid of it completely.
So what is important for building a firearm is (or any mechanical device for that matter),
is identifying what's the range of sizes that we can have on this part,
that will ensure that it will in fact work correctly with every other part. If you don't have that,
you go back to the pre-industrial revolution days of hand fitting every gun until it works right.
And it's not just part dimensions. There's also other information on a set of
blueprints, or technical data package, that you need.
Namely information on material specification. So not just is this steel or aluminum or
neodymium, but also what alloy? There are an almost infinite number of different steel alloys.
Do you want 4140, do you want 8620? What is the heat treating specification?
Is it surface hardened, is it through hardened?
All of these things are essential, and often, I think, are unappreciated by
people who haven't worked in the manufacturing trades, or manufacturing industry.
So you can take a look at your Bjorgum pistol, and even if you have one in hand
and you can measure every part, that's one example of the gun, and it'll give you one set of dimensions.
It doesn't give you your tolerance ranges, and unless you start doing a lot of
material analysis, it also doesn't tell you what alloys you have,
how they're heat-treated. And all that type of information.
So in order to properly reverse engineer a firearm, ... you need to have a lot more information.
You would need to go through and do a statistical study of the dimensions of, say,
50 different sets of parts, to try and approximate what were the tolerances.
That won't be perfect, but it'll probably get you good enough information to work on.
Now people will ask, why don't I just get the technical data package from the original manufacturer?
Well, often that doesn't exist any more.
While those things are not covered by patent or copyright law, they are private property.
And it doesn't really serve a company's interest to make that sort of thing available to other people.
You know, ... if I'm Bjorgum, why would I want to publish all of my blueprints,
which would then allow other people to make the guns and compete with me? I keep that to myself.
When companies dissolve, when they go bankrupt, even very successful designs,
often that technical data package is just lost,
if there isn't someone there specifically interested in keeping track of it.
For most people, when the company goes bankrupt or dissolves, you know,
the opportunity to be building the gun has gone away. And there's no point in having this data,
and it goes out in a pile with all of the other paperwork associated with the company.
So, there are some guns where technical data packages have survived,
and have kind of gotten into the public sphere. But not as many as you might expect.
And certainly not typically ones that are unusual, weird and forgotten weapons.
So hopefully this has been educational and informative for folks.
We'll be back tomorrow with a proper gun video.
Thanks for watching.